Prof. Yonah Seleti

Yonah Seleti is currently Acting Group Executive for Programme 4: Human Capital and Knowledge systems at the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Programme 4 is responsible for the developing and implementing strategies and policies for human capital development, the science platforms, emerging research areas, infrastructure, and for indigenous knowledge systems. For the last three years he has provided leadership in the interfacing of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) into the National System of Innovation. 
 
The DST is in the process of finalising the Science, Engineering and Technology Human Capital Development Strategy. Yonah Seleti works with the sub-programme on human capital and science platforms to plan for the human capital that will be required to drive the knowledge-based economy of the future. Programme 4 works closely with the NRF in the roll-out of its human capital strategies.  

Prof. Seleti comes from an academic programme. He has taught in Zambia, Lesotho, USA, Denmark and South Africa. He taught at the Universities of Zambia, Dalhousie (Halifax, Canada), Lesotho, KwaZulu-Natal, Tulane (New Orleans) and Roskilder in Denmark.  

He has served on several Ministerial Committees, including the Ministerial Committee on the National Curriculum Statement and History Ministerial Committee. As a member of the former, he helped develop the FET curriculum 2006. He had the privilege of leading a project that reprinted the eight volumes of the UNESCO General History of Africa and distributed the set to more than 3 000 schools in the country. He has also published widely on the history of Africa.

Over the past decade he has championed for the recognition and integration of IKS at universities and to be mainstreamed in school curricula and heritage institutions. He also worked as a director of the Campbell Collections of the University of Natal and as Heritage Manager at the Freedom Park Trust. He joined the Department of Science and Technology in the National Office for Indigenous Knowledge system in April 2006. He has been Acting Group Executive for Programme 4 since August 2008.