Rasigan Maharajh

@tut.ac.za

Full Professor of Public Affairs. Faculty of Humanities
Tshwane University of Technology

Rasigan Maharajh


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https://researchid.co/rasiganmx
Rasigan Maharajh is a South African academic, activist-scholar, and research leader with work experience spanning over four decades. His research focuses on evolutionary political economy of science, technology, and innovation. He has held significant leadership roles in national and international institutions and has an extensive record of scholarly publications, community engagements, and global collaborations. Rasigan has a Ph.D. in the Political Economy of Research Policy from Lund University and is concurrently: Full Professor of Public Affairs at Tshwane University of Technology; Elected Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa; Associate Research Fellow of the Tellus Institute; Ministerial Representative to the Council of Rhodes University; and Trustee of the Canon Collins Trust.

EDUCATION

1987: Reservoir Hills Secondary School: Matriculation.
1993: Development Contact Network: Logical Framework Matrix Methodology
1997 – 1998: Global Business Network: Basic and Advanced Scenario Development and Planning Modules
1998: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research: Advanced Leadership Programme Certificate of Outstanding Merit.
1999: Think Tools AG: Basic, Intermediate and Advance Methodology and Application Modules
2004: Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity: Complexity Fundamentals and Certification Course
1992: University of Natal: Bachelor of Arts (Economic History and Sociology)
1993: Harvard University Kennedy School: Education Policy Analysis and Planning Certificate
1994: University of Natal: Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Economic History
1999: Harvard University Business School: Senior Executive Programme for Southern Africa
2011: Lund University Forskningspolitiska Institutet, School of Economics and Management: Doctor of Philosophy

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Multidisciplinary, Social Sciences, Sociology and Political Science, History and Philosophy of Science
10

Scopus Publications

1357

Scholar Citations

14

Scholar h-index

18

Scholar i10-index

Scopus Publications

  • Forty Years After: Personality and History (Part I)
    Russia in Global Affairs, 2025
    Forty years since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Russia in Global Affairs asked political scientists and international relations experts in different countries to say how, living in a completely different world of today, they assess the events of that time and the role of his ‘new political thinking.’
  • ECOCIDE OR SOCIALISM: ECOLOGICAL CHALLENGES AND NEOLIBERAL CAPITALIST CONSTRAINS ON RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
    Rasigan Maharajh, Sigfried Tivana
    Mzala Nxumalo Leftist Thought and Contemporary South Africa, 2024
    The possibility of constructing a truly united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist Republic of South Africa (RSA) emerged out of the first elections to be premised on the basis of universal suffrage in 1994. That year, the African National Congress (ANC) had also commemorated its 82nd anniversary and its 8 January statement declared 1994 as the ‘Year of Liberation for all South Africans’ (ANC, 1994). The putative ‘democratic breakthrough’ was achieved consequent to approximately 342 years of struggle against corporate state capture, colonial subjugation, imperial incorporation into world systems, racial capitalism and apartheid by the overwhelming majority of south Africans. Notwithstanding the Portuguese claim that they were the first European travellers to venture past the southern-most territories of the continent of Africa, it was the Dutch East India Company 2 (DEIC or VOC) that would initially come to occupy the land through the violent expropriation of the indigenous inhabitants. The DEIC enclosed a portion of land in Cape Town whereupon they constructed a fort and later a castle. It was during the European transition from the feudal mode of production into capitalism that the origins of private property relations were established in southern Africa.
  • CREATIVELY DESTROYING VACCINE APARTHEID: Emerging STI Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Combined, Uneven, yet Common, Global Context
    Rasigan Maharajh
    Reimagining Innovation Systems in the Covid and Post Covid World, 2023
    This chapter aims to approach the global COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of a critique of capitalism as a totalizing production and reproduction schematic. It concentrates on the situation on the Continent of Africa and the challenges posed by the continent's deployment of health system capacities and capabilities to care for its affected and infected populations. Notwithstanding such sentiment, Vaccine Apartheid had clearly been established. It, therefore, follows that access to medicines and vaccines in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health is of paramount concern. While access to vaccines was recognized as being essential for building global immunity against COVID-19, intellectual property rights constitute a “crucial obstacle for global vaccine access”. The chapter concludes by examining the contradiction between the socially determined political modalities of intellectual property regimes and the moral imperatives of saving people's lives.
  • Innovation and technological change in South Africa
    Erika Kraemer-Mbula, Rasigan Maharajh
    Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy, 2021
    This chapter explores the main achievements and remaining challenges in the governance of the South African science, technology, and innovation (STI) system. While reflecting on the inherited features from the apartheid period, it focuses on the period between the two White Papers in 1996 and 2019. The chapter discusses the main shifts in policy emphasis (intents) of these two policy/institutional developments and connects them to the STI system performance and its measurement. It shows that the drastic shift in policy orientation towards addressing social imperatives and the quantitative improvements in the STI outputs since 1994, have not materialized in a radical transformation of the economy or the social relations inherited from apartheid. The chapter argues that the assessment of the STI system needs to be expanded through an evolutionary lens in order to activate the needed systemic transformations.
  • Fictions, factors and futures: Reflections on Africa's impressive growth
    Geci Karuri-Sebina, Alioune Sall, Rasigan Maharajh, Alinah Segobye
    Development Basingstoke, 2012
  • Innovation strategies in developing countries
    OECD, International Development Research Centre
    Innovation and the Development Agenda, 2010
    This chapter explores issues relating to innovation strategies in developing countries. By flagging some key issues in the literature, it identifies the many dimensions of innovation strategies in developing countries and examines the implications for different developing regions. It suggests that innovation strategies that are shaped by domestic market and policy realities are more robust and help to improve the performance of enterprises at country level. As countries differ in their challenges, resources and needs, their policy and development frameworks necessarily vary considerably. This chapter draws some tentative conclusions from the literature, which suggests that strategies based on innovation systems are, to some extent, replicable.
  • Rethinking the linkages between teaching and extension in South Africa
    Lindile L Ndabeni, Rasigan Maharajh
    Science and Public Policy, 2009
    The objective in this paper is to review the technology stations program at Tshwane University of Technology. The technology stations are a product of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) policy objectives. The DST's policy is aimed at strengthening and expanding mutually beneficial links between universities of technology and small, medium-sized and micro enterprises (SMMEs). The analysis disclosed the contribution of the technology stations to technology transfer in the SMME economy of the electronics and chemicals sub-sectors.
  • New challenges for universities beyond education and research
    Bo Göransson, Rasigan Maharajh, Ulrich Schmoch
    Science and Public Policy, 2009
    The two time-honoured tasks of universities are teaching and research which have long provided society with specific skills and new knowledge and ideas. Expectations have increased exponentially and demands are originating from a much wider range of stakeholders. Universities are now given progressively more important roles in economic expansion, social development, better forms of political organization and governance, plus providing education for more students, and developing and transferring technology to industry. The capacity of universities to respond is insufficient, in both the developed and developing worlds. New models to guide the evolution of universities include the triple helix, the creation of entrepreneurial or specialized universities, large-scale excellence-driven environments or the concept of developmental universities. Most of these ultimately suggest that the universities move towards technology-oriented third missions, thus a closer interaction with enterprises. This special issue of Science and Public Policy explores such issues in 12 countries.
  • New activities of universities in transfer and extension: Multiple requirements and manifold solutions
    Bo Göransson, Rasigan Maharajh, Ulrich Schmoch
    Science and Public Policy, 2009
    The third mission encompasses all activities of universities beyond their first and second missions, education and research. An analysis of various countries with different economic, political and geographic features reveals an increased demand for such activities in particular with regard to technology transfer, but also as to the support of the civil society in more general terms. Therefore the universities have to find a new balance between education, research and transfer/extension. However, suitable solutions are often complicated by the orientation of the universities and the policy actors on non-scrutinized paradigms originating in other contexts. The strategies in different countries are embedded in their specific context, making it impossible to determine a best practice. Nonetheless, many interesting approaches can be observed, and mutual learning can be fruitful.
  • Overcoming underdevelopment in South Africa's second economy
    Michael Aliber, Marié Kirsten, Rasigan Maharajh, Josephilda Nhlapo-Hlope, Oupa Nkoane
    Development Southern Africa, 2006
    This paper is a synthesis of the July 2005 Development Report published by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Human Sciences Research Council and United Nations Development Programme (DBSA, HSRC and UNDP). The Report asks why, if the origins of economic dualism are rooted in the cheap, forced, migrant labour introduced by the mining industry and reinforced during apartheid, does dualism persist under democracy when all the relevant laws and many of the practices of the past have been abolished? The breakdown of apartheid did not immediately translate into improved material conditions for the majority of South Africans: 300 years of colonialism and 50 of internal colonialism had hard-wired a duality into the system. Two worlds, which may be conceptualised as the first and second economies, coexisted: a globally integrated world of production, exchange and consumption, and a constrained world of informality, poverty and marginalisation. This synthesis sheds light on the origin and nature of the 'second economy' metaphor, and suggests solutions.

RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • Understanding systems of innovation in Africa
    M Scerri, A Mutua, B Okolo, E Makheta, G Karuri-Sebina, M Kaggwa, ...
    2025
  • Africa’s Strategic Partnerships with BRICS and Other Emerging Countries
    R Maharajh
    New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy 98 (1) , 2025
    2025
    Citations: 1
  • Africa’s Strategic Partnerships with BRICS and other Emerging Countries Review by Rasigan Maharajh
    S Zondi, H Adogo, R Maharajh
    New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy 2025 (98 … , 2025
    2025
  • Ecocide or Socialism: Ecological Challenges and Neoliberal Capitalist Constrains on Radical Transformation 1
    R Maharajh, S Tivana
    Mzala Nxumalo, Leftist Thought and Contemporary South Africa, 301-321 , 2024
    2024
    Citations: 1
  • Creatively Destroying Vaccine Apartheid: Emerging STI Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Combined, Uneven, yet Common, Global Context
    R Maharajh
    Reimagining Innovation Systems in the COVID and Post-COVID World, 121-132 , 2023
    2023
  • THE FATE OF MANKIND IS AGAIN CLOSELY INTERTWINED WITH THE FATE OF RUSSIA
    D Hamid, G Arvind, M Kishore, M Rasigan, X Lanxin, J Dayan, C Brahma, ...
    Russia in Global Affairs 21 (1 (81)), 50-65 , 2023
    2023
  • Innovation and Technological Change in South Africa
    E Kraemer-Mbula, R Maharajh
    The Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy, 467-488 , 2021
    2021
    Citations: 1
  • Dear President Ramaphosa
    B Turok
    New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy 2019 (74), 14-15 , 2019
    2019
  • Economic policy substance and process: letter to Finance Minister
    MT Mboweni, MC Ramaphosa, MR Davies, ME Patel
    2019
  • Africa and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Need for ‘Creative Destruction’Beyond Technological Change
    R Maharajh
    Perspectives Africa 3, 30-34 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 9
  • The global crisis of inequality and its South African manifestations
    D Pillay
    New South African Review 6: The Crisis of Inequality , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 7
  • New South African Review 6: The Crisis of Inequality
    JA van Wyk, S Vally, S Oloruntoba, D Neves, J Mudronova, S Mnwana, ...
    Wits University Press , 2018
    2018
  • Education, the state and class inequality: The case for free higher education in South Africa
    E Motala, S Vally, R Maharajh
    New South African Review 6, 167-182 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 28
  • The policy environment and policy options for the South African system of innovation
    M Scerri, R Maharajh
    The Emergence of Systems of Innovation in South (ern) Africa: Long Histories … , 2016
    2016
    Citations: 3
  • Quality, free university education is necessary–and possible
    S Vally, E Motala, L Naidoo, M Hlatshwayo, R Maharajh
    Mail and Guardian 28 , 2016
    2016
    Citations: 5
  • SOUTH CHINA SEA: THE ISLANDS OF DISCORD.
    GM Lokshin
    Aziya i Afrika segodnya , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 3
  • Fictions, factors and futures: reflections on Africa's' impressive growth'
    A Segobye, R Maharajh, A Sall, G Karuri-Sebina
    2015
  • Flight of the flamingos: a study on the mobility of R&D workers
    TE Pogue, G Cele, M Du Toit, M Kahn, V Reddy, W Blankley, R Maharajh
    HSRC Publishers , 2015
    2015
  • Health innovation systems, equity and development
    JE Cassiolato, MCC Soares
    E-papersServiços Editoriais , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 34
  • Being Well in the Early 21st Century: Contemporary Dynamics in the Political Economy of Health
    R Maharajh
    Chapter , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 2

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • New activities of universities in transfer and extension: multiple requirements and manifold solutions
    B Göransson, R Maharajh, U Schmoch
    Science and public policy 36 (2), 157-164 , 2009
    2009
    Citations: 219
  • South Africa: Reforming higher education and transforming the national system of innovation
    R Maharajh, E Motala, M Scerri
    Universities in transition: The changing role and challenges for academic … , 2011
    2011
    Citations: 204
  • Global innovation in emerging economies
    P Reddy
    Routledge , 2011
    2011
    Citations: 125
  • Inequality and Development Challenges: BRICS National Systems of Innovation
    MCC Soares, M Scerri, R Maharajh
    India: Routledge , 2014
    2014
    Citations: 102
  • Overcoming underdevelopment in South Africa's second economy
    M Aliber, M Kirsten, R Maharajh, J Nhlapo-Hlope, O Nkoane
    Development Southern Africa 23 (01), 45-61 , 2006
    2006
    Citations: 97
  • Introduction: New challenges for universities beyond education and research
    B Göransson, R Maharajh, U Schmoch
    Science and Public Policy 36 (2), 83-84 , 2009
    2009
    Citations: 84
  • Innovation Systems for ICT: The case of South Africa
    R Maharajh, A Baskaran, M Muchie
    Bridging the Digital Divide: Innovation Systems for ICT in Brazil, China … , 2006
    2006
    Citations: 78
  • Flight of the Flamingos: A Study on the Mobility of R&D Workers
    M Kahn, W Blankley, R Maharajh, TE Pogue, V Reddy, G Cele, M du Toit
    Cape Town: HSRC Publishers, 128 , 2004
    2004
    Citations: 78
  • Health innovation systems, equity and development
    JE Cassiolato, MCC Soares
    E-papersServiços Editoriais , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 34
  • Innovation Strategies in Developing Countries
    R Maharajh, E Kraemer-Mbula
    Innovation and the Development Agenda, 133-151 , 2010
    2010
    Citations: 32
  • The anti-capitalist dictionary: Movements, histories and motivations
    DE Lowes
    Zed Books , 2006
    2006
    Citations: 32
  • Innovating beyond Racial Capitalism: A Contribution towards the Analysis of the Political Economy of Post-Apartheid South Africa.
    R Maharajh
    Lund University , 2011
    2011
    Citations: 31
  • Education, the state and class inequality: The case for free higher education in South Africa
    E Motala, S Vally, R Maharajh
    New South African Review 6, 167-182 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 28
  • Technological Change for Local Economic Growth and Development
    R Maharajh, T Pogue
    Sustainable Manufacturing?: The Case of South Africa and Ekurhuleni, 46-60 , 2006
    2006
    Citations: 17
  • The Co-evolution of Innovation and Inequality
    M Scerri, MCC Soares, R Maharajh
    Inequality and Development Challenges, 1-18 , 2014
    2014
    Citations: 14
  • The informal sector and the challenges of development in South Africa.
    LL Ndabeni, R Maharajh
    2013
    Citations: 13
  • Fictions, Factors and Futures: Reflections on Africa's ‘impressive growth’
    G Karuri-Sebina, A Sall, R Maharajh, A Segobye
    Development 55 (4), 491-496 , 2012
    2012
    Citations: 11
  • Africa toward 2030: challenges for development policy
    E Lundsgaarde
    Springer , 2011
    2011
    Citations: 10
  • Africa and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The Need for ‘Creative Destruction’Beyond Technological Change
    R Maharajh
    Perspectives Africa 3, 30-34 , 2018
    2018
    Citations: 9
  • Sustentabilidade socioambiental em um contexto de crise
    JE Cassiolato, MG Podcameni, MCC Soares
    CEP 20, 006 , 2015
    2015
    Citations: 8