It’s a great pleasure to be here with you this afternoon and I look forward to a fruitful engagement.
Science faculties all over South Africa and probably worldwide face a number of similar challenges within the higher education system, hence the need for them to share best practices and to collectively develop strategies to advance science not only in South Africa, but in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region generally. So I welcome this opportunity to address the Forum, as it’s important that we get together from time to time to provide feedback to each other and to re-align our thoughts.
As I understand, you have specially asked that I provide a status report on the department’s flagship projects, including the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), Research Chairs programme, Centres of Excellence, the TIA as well as give you an indication of the DST’s future projections of funding.
Let me provide context to my speech, by quoting the department’s mission. “to develop, coordinate and manage a national system of innovation that will bring about maximum human capital, sustainable economic growth and improved quality of life.’
Human Capital Development is at the heart of the work we do in the department and the instruments you have asked me to talk to are key in this endeavour.
At the beginning of this year, I approved the Ministerial guidelines for improving equity in the distribution of DST/ National Research Foundation (NRF) bursaries and fellowships. These guidelines are grounded on three fundamental principles of representivity, improved efficiencies and prioritisation 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. The National Research Foundation is expected to start implementing the guidelines this year, and to achieve set targets by 2015. Clearly these targets are shaped by the funding available and we will continue to make the best use of available resources, while seeking to access increased resources.
The DST Strategy for Human Capital Development for Research Innovation and Scholarship has been gazetted for public comment. The strategy aims to increase the number of active researchers and to enhance research and innovation skills and outputs in order to improve South Africa’s international competitiveness as a producer of scientific knowledge and innovation, in support of national socio-economic development. It will also guide the investment in student training, and researcher development, while fully maximising the outputs of established researchers.
Some of you have already sent their comments via Higher Education South Africa in February this year – thank you!
According to the Science and Technology Laws Amendment Act of 2011, the Minister of Science and Technology must declare research institutions which will be directly funded via the NRF. The main purpose of the declaration of research institutions is to promote efficiency and effectiveness in the spending of public funds. I’d like to stress that the declaration of research institutions is only for the purposes of giving the NRF guidance on the institutions that it can directly fund.
Astronomy
The continuous development and strengthening of astronomy in South Africa remains a high priority for the DST. Last month, I convened a meeting of senior DST officials, the Directors of National Astronomy Facilities, the Square Kilometer Array South Africa (SKA-SA) project, the Astronomy Desk and the NRF. The objective was to reflect on the current governance model, roles of stakeholders; taking into account the scale of recent investments in astronomy and astronomy infrastructure, and its international stature.
The meeting agreed that the current momentum in growing and strengthening astronomy in the country should be maintained and stepped up if possible. This was particularly important in view of the recent Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) science successes, the developing African VLBI Network, progress made with MeerKAT construction, as well as the successful SKA bid.
To this effect a proposal was accepted that all astronomy activities currently residing within the NRF be consolidated in a sub-Agency of the NRF as an intermediate arrangement. This would entail the consolidation of all current astronomy national research facilities, the Hartebeeshoek Radio Astronomy Observatory and the South African Astronomical Observatory, including SALT operations and the SKA-SA project, as well as existing human capital development initiatives into one managed astronomy programme within the NRF.
Square Kilometre Array
South Africa has already demonstrated its excellent science and engineering skills by designing and starting to build the telescope – as a pathfinder to the SKA. The first seven dishes, 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.
To date, the African SKA Human Capital Development Programme has awarded close to 400 grants for studies in astronomy and engineering from undergraduate to postdoctoral level.
Last month the SKA Office issued the request for proposal for the SKA Pre Construction Phase. This invitation is for international consortia to bid for work packages to design the various components of the SKA, such as antennas, receivers, signal processing systems, data transport and high performance computers.
The SKA Pre Construction Phase, running to the end of 2016, is the initial part of the specification and design of the SKA telescope, during which the telescope architecture will be designed and the requirements for all the sub systems will be determined.
This is exciting indeed.
Technology Innovation Agency review
As you may be aware my predecessor Minister Pandor commissioned the Ministerial Review Committee to review the South African science, technology and innovation landscape with respect to its readiness to meet the needs country as well as to respond to the rapidly changing global context. We are considering the recommendations made and have already implemented some of these, including the review of the Technology Innovation Agency which is currently underway.
Given that the TIA was formed when more than five institutions merged, the processes to fully integrate these institutions’ functions into the TIA have proved challenging for both the Agency and its wider stakeholder base, including the DST. Despite this background, I can report that TIA is fulfilling its goal of being the key structural intervention to support Government in stimulating and intensifying technological innovation by facilitating the translation of a greater proportion of local research and development into technology-based products and services that can be put to use for socio-economic development
South African Research Chairs Initiative
The rationale behind this Initiative is to strengthen research capacity and leadership at South African public universities by attracting established researchers from abroad and from industry into Higher Education Institutions and retaining those already in the system.
To date we have 154 research chairs, with 118 of those already filled.
The funding cycle for the Chairs is five years. At the end of this term the Chairs are reviewed and based on performance a decision is made on whether to fund the next cycle. During 2012, 30 Chairs were reviewed and 26 of those got outright approval for further funding. Follow up meetings were held with the four Chairs who did not get the immediate approval and they were later given a conditional approval.
The department has further commissioned the NRF to review the Research Chairs initiative as a whole and we are waiting on the report. A major challenge of this programme so far has been the attrition rate of chair holders - to date, ten chair holders have vacated their chair positions for various reasons including retirement and chairs taking up research or management positions elsewhere.
Centres of Excellence
CoEs are physical or virtual entities of research which concentrate existing capacity and resources to enable researchers to collaborate across disciplines and institutions on long-term projects that are locally relevant and internationally competitive in order to enhance the pursuit of research excellence and capacity development.
The Programme was established in 2004 and there are eight CoE to date, with the ninth Centre - the Palaeoscience Centre of Excellence to be launched next week. The Department has completed a framework for the opening of the call for an additional five CoEs, in the 2012/13 financial year - at least one of which will be in the Social Sciences and Humanities. The awarding of the five new CoEs will be completed before the end of the 2013/14 financial year, at which time we would have a total of 14 CoEs.
Scholarly Publishing and e-Resourcing for research (the SciELO project run by ASSAf)
The DST together with the Department of Higher Education and Training have recently signed a collaboration agreement which has led to the formation of the task teams driving the following priority areas: Scholarly Publishing and e-Resourcing for research (the SciELO project run by ASSAf), human resource development, research infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array and new universities.
Regarding research and innovation infrastructure provision to Higher Education Institutions, an agreement has been reached with the DHET that the DHET and the 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. 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.
SciELO is a premier, high-quality and prestigious open-access journal collection aimed at serving the South African research community through effective quality assurance, worldwide visibility, and amenability to bibliometric analysis. The open access collection will promote South African research through enhanced visibility of, and easier access to, South African research. For the 2013 MTEF, the DST has increased ASSAf’s budget by 40% in order to allow it to play a stronger role in support of research in South Africa.
Future projections
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 for HCD in the 2012/13 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.
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.
In addition to these investments, the DST received an extra allocation of R605 million over the 2013/14 MTEF period and this money will be used for “priority investments in research infrastructure” in accordance with the DST Infrastructure Framework. The Universities will receive some of the R605 million in funding towards the National Equipment Programme. An additional amount of R1,140 billion has been made available by the National Treasury for the Square Kilometre Array over the 2013/14 MTEF.
Thank you.
