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By Edwin Naidu
Amid concern over funding cutbacks, experts in southern Africa have emphasised the need for partnerships to create resilient financing models for African science.
With African science becoming increasingly influential globally and helping to set the continent’s science agenda, funding is critical.
The importance of leveraging partnerships was a recurring theme during the recent meeting of the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) in the Sub-Saharan Africa Annual Forum and the Global Research Council (GRC) Sub-Saharan African regional meeting in Gaborone.
Funding and innovative resource use were important topics of discussions among scientists, funders, think-tank leaders and policymakers from Africa on various science, technology, and innovation (STI) themes.
It saw engagement among the global network of partners in academia, industry, civil society, government and intergovernmental organisations.
The gathering discussed strengthening African national innovation ecosystems through institutions, policies and programming.
According to Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo and Dr Thandi Mgwebi, who serve at the National Research Foundation as the CEO and group executive of business advancement, respectively, the gathering took place within the context of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
It also laid out the framework for developing and enhancing strong strategic partnerships in support of STI on the continent.
Nelwamondo and Mgwebi said that the dominant discourse around the funding of science in Africa tended to focus on the limited contributions by African governments.
Many have not yet reached the AU’s target of allocating at least 1% of GDP to R&D. The Global North still dominates funding and there is limited private sector investment.
“What we hear much less about are the various homegrown funding organisations, such as public funders of science, and how, under conditions of precarity and uncertainty, they innovate around the development of resilient and sustainable models for funding science is more urgent than ever,” they said.
According to two, these organisations varied greatly in size and capacity in Africa – from a one-person operation within a ministry of science to fully fledged organisations. They played critical roles in their science systems regardless of their size and capacity.
For nine years, Nelwamondo and Mgwebi said the NRF and its sibling public research funders have made significant strides to build and sustain funding partnerships through the SGCI in the region.
Launched in 2015, the SGCI has strengthened the capacities of SGCs to support research and evidence-based policies that contribute to economic and social development. The multilateral alliance involves 17 countries.
“Together, we have funded national, bilateral, triangular and multilateral research programmes that seek to contribute to knowledge, human capital development and solutions to Africa’s pressing challenges.
“We have shared experiences, expanded our capacities and connected the dots that enhance our ability to disburse funds into the research ecosystem in an informed manner,” they said.
These initiatives have expanded capabilities to promote the status of women and equality in research.
“We have collectively produced scholarly work that documents how public funders of African research function are positioned. Together, we have built a shared understanding of what it takes to leverage scientific and political proximity to contribute to the financial resilience of Africa’s research ecosystem.“
They said that through the SGCI, as public funders of research, they were gaining greater visibility, including in the global science arena.
“We are positioning ourselves as partners of choice who interface with other science bodies, policymakers and communities across the continent and beyond,” added Nelwamondo and Mgwebi.
The NRF has taken the lead in harnessing its partnerships with its Global North funding partners and African science granting councils, inspired by the SGCI, to fund long-term strategic investments linked to the continent’s development agenda.
A prime example is the OR Tambo Africa Research Chairs Initiative, which is based on a distributed funding model in which all partners, including the host institutions, contribute to the programme’s funding.
“In doing so, African public funders of researchers are increasingly positioning themselves as partners of choice who are willing, able and available to partner with and provide an interface for science bodies, policymakers and communities on the continent and beyond.
“They are partners of choice because they can manage and disburse funds and offer insights and entries into the inner workings of their national science systems.”
These partnerships align with the broader desire for African public funders of research to increase the collective voice of African science on the global science stage, contribute to setting the African science agenda and influence the international science agenda.
These efforts will continue to be bolstered by the expansion of partnerships among governments, the private sector, academia, think-tanks, other funding partners and intergovernmental organisations to fund science for effective outcomes as mandated by the AU and in line with the SDGs.
“This cannot be overemphasised since global science is being called on increasingly to address the significant economic, environmental, geopolitical and technological crises of the 21st century,” said Nelwamondo and Mgwebi.
Abraham Mathodi, acting deputy director of the Ministry of Communications, Knowledge and Technology in Botswana, said it was essential to establish partnerships to address issues in Africa.
“As a member of the Science Granting Council Initiative, Botswana has benefited by participating. It has been able to get involved in other partnerships, for example, with the National Research Foundation under the OR Tambo Africa Research Chairs Initiative.”
He said as a member of the SGCI, Botswana was able to participate in the Africa-Japan collaborative research programme, the AJ Core.
“Participation in the SGCI has also given us a platform to be part of the Global Research Council, and it has opened windows for us to be able to solicit other partnerships, even within or without the SGCI and without the GRC; we are able now to dialogue,” he added.
Cephus Adjei Mensah, head of the Research Council of Ghana, represented by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, said one of the very core requirements was co-creating.
“So, for example, how do we look at research areas that present some commonalities to us in terms of how we can fund research, so we can see that even within the SGCI, there are some best practices for working together in terms of core elements.
“Programmes like, for example, funding initiatives that we have been able to do together, like the long-term Europe, Africa, water, energy, food programme and some of the bilateral partnerships.
“That is going to be how we pull funds together from respective institutions to make a better impact, is one of the good ways to go… looking at sustainability, because most of the issues are across, and there are commonalities within that.”
Professor Anicia Peters, CEO of the National Commission on Research Science and Technology in Namibia, said it was key to examine what was being funded. While national priorities may exist, they may be shifting.
“In Namibia, food security is a priority, which includes agriculture. But then you have your health issues, etc., and then you have very topical issues that come up, like the energy crisis that we were experiencing, the green hydrogen drive, and suddenly, the oil and gas discoveries came in.
“Namibia has declared an emergency regarding the drought, so there’s no water. So now we must shift our focus. We should have been consistently working on it, but it is just now where we need to build,” she said.
Peters believes that resilient systems were needed, however, they must be flexible, agile and adaptive systems.
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