Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom recently reassured the deans of the faculties of sciences of South Africa’s universities about funding for human capital development (HCD) – including postgraduate student support – and investment in research infrastructure over the next couple of years. He was addressing the National Science Deans Forum.
“In November last year, I announced the allocation of R798-million for HCD initiatives, and approved the transfer of these funds to the National Research Foundation (NRF) for HCD in the 2012/13 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF),” he pointed out. “Also, over the 2013/14 MTEF period, an additional investment of R400-million in the 2015/16 financial year has been made by the National Treasury towards postgraduate student support. The bulk of these funds will be given to the NRF for distribution for student bursaries and researcher grant funding.”
He noted that the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Strategy for Human Capital Development for Research Innovation and Scholarship had been gazetted for public comment. This is intended to boost the size of South Africa’s active research community, improve skills and results and increase the country’s international competitiveness in science and innovation. In turn, this is intended to promote socioeconomic development.
In addition, at the start of the year, Hanekom authorised the ‘Ministerial guidelines for improving equity in the distribution of DST/NRF bursaries and fellowships’. “These guidelines are grounded on the three fundamental principles of representivity, improved efficiencies and priori- tisation of science, engineering and technology disciplines. As the cooperation of researchers will be essential in order to achieve these objectives, universities need to familiarise themselves with these Ministerial guidelines.” These guidelines should start being implemented by the NRF this year and prescribed targets should be reached by 2015.
Regarding research infrastructure, the DST was granted an additional R605- million for the term of the 2013/14 MTEF. This will be used to fund what the DST Infrastructure Framework designates as “priority investments”. Part of this money will go to the country’s universities to help fund the National Equipment Programme.
“Regarding research and innovation infrastructure provision to Higher Educa- tion Institutions (HEIs), an agreement has been reached with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) that the DHET and HEIs will be responsible for ensuring the provision of basic research training equipment in universities, whereas the DST will fund specialised and expensive research equipment,” reported Hanekom. “Also, the DHET and HEIs will be responsible for institutional Information Communication Technology connectivity costs and the DST for the provision of the national backbone.”
Separately, the National Treasury has allocated a further R1.14-billion during the period of the 2013/14 MTEF for the South African contribution to the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope programme. The major portion of the SKA will be based in South Africa (with the remainder being in Australia).
“South Africa has already demonstrated its excellent science and engineering skills by designing and starting to build the [MeerKAT] telescope – as a pathfinder to the SKA,” he affirmed. “The first seven dishes (KAT-7) are complete and have already produced their first pictures. Plans are on track to deliver the 64 MeerKAT antennae by the end of 2016. “MeerKAT is attracting great interest internationally, with more than 500 international astronomers, 58 from Africa, having submitted science proposals involving MeerKAT once it has been completed.”
In support of the SKA project, the African SKA HCD programme – an initiative of SKA South Africa – has to date issued nearly 400 grants for astro- nomy and engineering studies, from undergraduate level to postdoctoral research. “This is exciting indeed!” he enthused.