SA has for many years punched way above its weight in scientific research, especially in the medical field, helped mostly by money pumped into the country’s university system by Western countries and other donors. I won’t discuss the potential loss of lives; much has been said about that by other voices.
The US decision to reduce, and possibly stop, the funding of research by SA academics therefore poses a big challenge to SA’s research ecosystem. The impact will spill over to the rest of the continent because of the leading role SA researchers play in helping develop research capacity in other African countries.
The impact of these funding cuts — especially their abruptness — is not just about money, the life blood of any research, but about the survival of an entire research ecosystem. It’s an ecosystem because research has far more to it than just the technical aspects.
This much became clear during a recent webinar, “Understanding the implication of financial cuts from the US on research in SA”, hosted by the Academy of Science of SA. To give a sense of what’s involved, the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the US department of health & human services, has been funding SA medical research to the tune of $100m-$150m a year, according to academic Salim Abdool Karim. Those figures exceed what the SA government has been pumping into medical research.
The research ecosystem encompasses at least five elements. The first, and perhaps most visible, is the capacity research creates that enables a country to deal with its health challenges. And SA has many, ranging from HIV/Aids to TB, as well as noncommunicable diseases. Some of the challenges are driven by idiosyncratic factors, making research by locally based researchers crucial.
The second, which is less visible, relates to research databases. These are, among other things, the mainstay of future research. Their loss would set back a research agenda and public health interventions by decades.
The third element of any research ecosystem is about partnerships with communities. Since they are based on trust, they take a long time to develop. Ending these partnerships because of funding constraints would erode trust, possibly leading to a loss of crucial sources of information.
The fourth element has to do with the training and development of the next generation of researchers. This is important not only for replenishing the country’s research talent, but for its transformation too. But the training and development of the next generation of researchers also takes time, a point made sharply in 2021 by the Council on Higher Education.
“Universities as knowledge-intensive institutions require academic staff with the requisite knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, acquiring and building such knowledge and expertise takes many years,” the council said, adding there was a “strong intersection between age, on the one hand, and the levels of knowledge, competence and experience of academics, on the other”.
Then there are the race and age factors. A 2017 study by two Stellenbosch academics — Marina Joubert and Lars Guenther — on SA’s most visible scientists living and working in the country found that 78% were white and 63% male. They also found that the age range of the 18 scientists mentioned by four or more respondents was 45-69 in 2016, giving an average age of 52.
Visibility was driven by two factors. Visibility among peers was driven by scholarly work and citation rates, while public visibility had to do with media exposure. The latter’s drivers could be a combination of academic work and participation in debates and activities outside science.
“Scientists’ active participation in public science communication (for example, presenting popular talks at schools and science centres) is not sufficient to ensure a high public profile. Public visibility requires an amplification of the individual scientist’s views and voice — something that would be virtually impossible to achieve without the strategic use of traditional and digital media platforms,” Joubert and Guenther wrote.
But views and voice must be authoritative, which, as the Council on Higher Education pointed out, takes time. A shortage of funding for research can lengthen the period it takes for an up- and-coming scientist to develop authoritative views and voice.
Given this impact and its ripple effects across the continent, the SA government should pull all stops to ensure further cuts to fundings are minimised, and to find other sources of funding.
• Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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