Author: Anton Binneman
Affiliation: NRF|SARAO
Country: South Africa
Title: Stakeholder Engagement with SKA in South Africa
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the worldÕs largest radio telescope. South AfricaÕs Karoo region and Western AustraliaÕs Murchison Shire were chosen as co-hosting locations for many scientific and technical reasons, ranging from the atmospherics above the sites to the radio quietness as a result of being two of the most remote locations on earth. South AfricaÕs arid Karoo region will host the core of the mid-frequency dishes, extending over the African continent, whereas, AustraliaÕs Murchison Shire will host the low-frequency antennas. As one of the largest scientific endeavours in history, the SKA will involve a wealth of the worldÕs leading scientists, engineers and policy-makers to bring the project to fruition.
The establishment of the SKA project held both positive and negative consequences for a vast array of stakeholders. This presentation reflects on how stakeholder management and communication evolved since the inception of the project to shed light on the complexities and challenges of science communication and stakeholder management and engagement. The discussions on the stakeholder communication that evolved during the four phases identified, demonstrates how the shift from stakeholder management to stakeholder engagement occurred and what the implications of these shifts were.
The evolution of the stakeholder communication is discussed in four phases; reflecting on the objectives, challenges and accomplishments in each phase. The discussion of each phase aims to demonstrate how the integration of knowledge accumulated in each phase and was used to develop a strategic and sustainable stakeholder engagement framework, as well as to map the way forward for science communication of this kind.
South Africa has a rich history of Astronomy and has collaborated with international astronomers frequently over the last 100 years. These collaborations were mostly in optical astronomy, but there have been collaborations in radio astronomy as well. With this background, amongst others, South Africa is well positioned to contribute to the SKA project.
By way of an introduction, the presentation commences with an overview of Astronomy in South Africa, covering its history and brief discussions on the instruments that have been established worldwide, as well as in South Africa. This brief discussion provides a perspective on the enormity of the SKA project from multidisciplinary scientific and engineering disciplines integrated with strategic communication and sustainable stakeholder engagement.