Five years on, the relevance of MISTRA is being confirmed over and over again. The thirst among South Africans for engagement at a high level of abstraction; the need for a platform for intellectual discourse not constrained by short-term cycles; openness among societal decisionmakers to ideas that do not necessarily confirm existing knowledge, and the yearning for transdisciplinary undertakings – all these factors have made MISTRA a unique and timely addition to South Africa’s ‘think industry’.

The first set of research projects have now been completed – bar one on the Arithmetic of Savings which
has demanded some level of ‘super-computing’ to process large data on the behaviour of clients in a real-life financial setting.

Partnerships have been forged across the public and private sectors to put the research outcomes into practice,
thus ensuring MISTRA’s policy impact. These have included facilitation of partnerships on the application of fuel cell technology; the strategic turnaround in football development; joint reflections on combatting the culture of patronage at local government level, and proposals on strengthening the government’s gender machinery. These research products are now available on global electronic platforms.

During the year under review, the second wave of priority research projects was launched, with most of them to be completed in 2015 and early 2016. Simultaneously, a new set of projects has been initiated for completion around 2018. In other words, the core work of MISTRA has become one of rolling in-depth research activity, involving by now hundreds of academics, researchers and practitioners.

Among the highlights in MISTRA’s research activities during the past year was the launch of the report on
nation formation and social cohesion in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Added to
this, MISTRA completed two commissioned books on the manifestation of resource nationalism across
continents and on the implementation of the African Mining Vision. Both of these confirm the truism that
mineral endowments should be treated as a common endowment from which nations should equitably benefit.
This is in addition to short-term commissioned projects such as research on social compacting.

In July 2014, Ms Graca Machel accorded us the honour of delivering the Mapungubwe Annual Lecture. In
November, the 20 Years of Democracy Conference, primarily reflecting on South Africa’s prospects in the
coming decades, was convened in collaboration with the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute and UNISA.

These activities have been buttressed by the growing network of local, continental and global partnerships,
including those with the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), United Nations University (UNUWIDER) and the BRICS think tank forum. In other words, 2014/15 has been a year of another
growth spurt, most critically in quality and content: and this, at the same time as we successfully reduced our
overall spending.