SARChI has staked bold ground in the knowledge and innovation value chain.
It represents a research and development (R&D) flagship investment by government of almost a billion rand. At its core, it aims to provide our universities with the financial backing to stimulate strategic research by boosting the number of world-class researchers in the country and attracting and retaining qualified research scientists.
Its added objective is to encourage a new generation of researchers by consciously creating career paths for highly skilled and mid-career researchers. This goes hand-in-hand with creating the conditions for established researchers to maximise their output.
SARChI is supported by the thinking in Government’s Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) which identified high-level skills as a major constraint in the development of the economy and society. South Africa’s standing on global R&D tables nosedived in the decade to 2002.
Investment by both the public and private sectors declined from 1.1% to 0.7% of GDP. Government’s renewed target is to increase R&D spending to at least 1% of GDP. There is a commitment to improve the technological and innovation capability and outcomes within the public and private sectors to enhance competitiveness in the global economy and to meet human development priorities.
While there is the overall focus on the investment and return in human capital development, the special focus areas are in science, engineering and technology. It is motivated by the belief that a highly skilled and innovative workforce will support an inclusive growth path consistent with the government priority of creating “a better life for all”.
SARChI zeros in on increased access to high level occupationally directed programmes in areas of critical need. This also translates into increasing the graduate output in the natural and physical sciences and engineering. A further projected outcome is the increased output of honours, masters and doctoral graduates and post-doctoral fellows. When measured against comparatively sized economies South Africa has a tremendous lag in postgraduate output especially at the doctoral level.
The programme is managed by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and dovetails with its high end skills development mandate. Since its inception in 2006, SARChI has awarded 92 chairs within the South African university system, with all but three of them presently filled. The bulk of the awards, namely 46% have gone to the Natural and Agricultural Sciences with 17% to the Health and Social Sciences respectively.
Engineering and Applied Technology have claimed 5% while the Humanities have garnered 10%. As immediate outcomes, in the period 2007-2010, SARChI support boosted the honours, masters and doctoral enrolments from 348 to 3072. The haul of peer reviewed publications had a massive jump from 162 to 1556 in the period under review.
Additionally, patents filed for registration went up from 4 to 27. It is quite clear that these benefits can be maximised through encouraging more researchers to patent their discoveries and by also ensuring that those patents are adequately protected and utilised to the benefit of the country.
Given the tremendous confidence across the stakeholder spectrum in SARChI’s role in improving South Africa’s international research and innovation competitiveness while responding to the social and economic challenges of the country, a further 62 Research Chairs are in the pipeline.
The NRF will manage that call for submissions in the South African university system. If the haul of first class scientists and researchers that have already been enticed into the initiative is anything to go by, we can be certain that the SARChI strategic investment is geared to yield further phenomenal outcomes going forward.
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement