The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) is a National Facility managed by the National Research Foundation and incorporates all national radio astronomy telescopes and programmes.

SARAO has established the following projects:
- A GPS Calibrator
- Callosal
- IronHive: Server Array
- Low cost engineered prosthetic limb (foot/lower leg) development
- Personalised HIV Platform

South African Astronomy Observatory (SAAO) Network's Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is upgrading its Robert Stobie Spectrograph (RSS) with a new single monolithic CCD detector to replace the old, fragmented one, improving performance and throughput by eliminating chip gaps and leveraging new fringe-suppression techniques. This new detector will be similar to the one used in the RSS-Red arm, with the goal of being operational by early 2026.

The South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) has been exploring marine red algae along the Eastern Cape coastline as a source of novel compounds with potential against breast cancer. These algae, including species such as Laurencia and Gelidium, produce chemically diverse metabolites such as halogenated terpenes, bromophenols, and sulfated polysaccharides.

Pelebox also known as Technovera (Pty) Ltd is a South African health-tech company offering smart lockers to radically cut patient waiting times at clinics, from over three hours to under two minutes. Their “Think Inside” philosophy emphasises designing for local realities: they view constraints not as setbacks but as catalysts for creative, frugal, contextually relevant innovation.