Speech by Naledi Pandor MP, Minister of Science and Technology, at the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) "Research and innovation for global challenges conference", Indaba Hotel & Conference Centre, Johannesburg
Prof Aldo Stroebel (President of SARIMA),
Dr John Wood, Secretary-General Association of Commonwealth Universities),
Dr John Kirkland (Deputy Secretary-General, Association of Commonwealth Universities),
Distinguished guests and delegates,
Dr Hambani Masheleni, African Union Commission,
It’s a great pleasure to be here.
This conference has provided a unique opportunity to raise the profile of the research and innovation management activities in Africa.
African countries need to invest more in their universities but more resources must also be matched with a commitment towards building and strengthening African higher education systems in ways that genuinely contribute to economic and political development and the alleviation of poverty and disease.
Over the past few years there has been a notable increase in the demand for higher education in Africa. This has been demonstrated by the growing number of students who seek access to higher education institutions, both on the continent and those who move from the continent to higher education institutions internationally.
This increase has often stretched institutions beyond capacity - leading inadvertently to the proliferation of private higher education providers. The proliferation of private providers has raised new debates around issues of quality and relevance of educational programmes.
Notwithstanding this, sub-Saharan Africa still lags behind other regions in the world as far as higher education enrolment is concerned. Although enrolments in Africa have increased significantly over the past three decades or so, the region’s progress has been overshadowed by equally rapid growth in other parts of the world.
Another sign of increased demand for access to higher education is student outflow from the continent to higher learning institutions in the developed countries. The international mobility of students has increased significantly over the past 10 to 15 years.
Changes in higher education infrastructures and capacity across the world partially explain this growth. Traditionally, the majority of mobile students came from the less developed countries and 80% of these studied in the OECD countries.
Other directions of student flow are now emerging, such as mobility within the commonwealth countries and South-South or North-South flows. The reasons for this shift include cost factors, increased competition in the market, and skills shortages.
Has South Africa benefitted from this increased mobility or in other words the globalisation of higher education?
In terms of research the answer is yes.
Our publication output has increased substantially since 1994 and more specifically since 2004. NACI, our advisory body, puts it like this: "The number of high impact journal publications by South Africans increased at an average of 10% per year over the 2003 –2012 period, representing an average growth of around 624 publications per year. This growth is much more rapid than the world average, resulting in a steady increase in percentage share of world journal publications from 0.49% in 2003 to 0.73% in 2012."
It has to be said that we have managed this increase without expanding the number of researchers. We are edging towards a demographic cliff. Back in 2011 in a HESA report under the the chairmanship of Saleem Badat, then the VC of Rhodes University, we were warned that" half of our professors and associate professors are due to retire in the next decade".
This is worrying because of their research output. Back in 1994 the over-50-year-olds only produced one in ten of credited publications. Now these over-50-year-olds produce five in ten of our scientific papers.
I was thinking about this research productivity of elderly white males this week when I read in Nature about a debate raging about retirement in the U.S. academy. The debate is about whether scientists should retire at 65 or whether they should go on like judges and politicians.
The evidence appears to be against those who want to go on. The gist of the big-data analysis of scientific papers in specific fields is that scientists are most innovative in their youth. It stands to reason when you think about it. So it makes me wonder what these elderly white males are doing when they are in control of research monies and other scholarly perks.
So we have acted. The DHET introduced a 'next-generation' scheme, beginning this year with 150 new academics taking up permanent posts in our universities and 80 % of whom will be African women.
To complete the answer to the question I asked before - Has South Africa benefitted from increased mobility or in other words the globalisation of higher education?
In terms of students, the answer is also yes.
We encourage students from around the world to come to South Africa to study and we intend to step up efforts to attract postgraduate students and postdoctoral scientists to come to South Africa. In 2000 there were 60,000 foreign students studying at our universities. Last year there were 90,000 out of a university student population of 850,000. Put another way, nearly one in eight students is a foreigner.
International students, postgraduates, researchers bring tremendous benefits to South Africa and they make an enormous contribution to the intellectual vibrancy and diversity of our educational institutions.
In closing, let me congratulate the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association. It has done a lot of work in training research managers. And it has lead discussions among key innovation stakeholders in the region to develop a model to optimise intellectual property management and technology transfer in South Africa’s higher education institutions and science councils.
Thank you for your attention!
