South Africa needs more R&D projects to be competitive

According to Mustapha, the past decade of R&D patterns in South Africa paints a worrying picture in terms of economics, even as R&D in the public sector offers glimmers of hope. Business R&D expenditure has taken a dive The biggest trend is that R&D expenditure, especially in the business sector, has been declining for the past decade. In 2011/12, the proportion of R&D done by the business sector was greater than 50%. Since then, it has been consistently dipping below the halfway mark, with the 2019/20 figure at around 40%. "This is significant, because one indicator that distinguishes developed from developing countries is the proportion of total R&D that the business sector does. If it's above 50%, you're almost certainly looking at a developed country; if it's below, it's probably a developing country." How much R&D is performed by the business sector is linked to whether multinationals and foreign funders consider the country a good location for R&D. It's also about investment strategies in new technologies-whether local companies decide to invest in R&D or to license technologies from elsewhere. We've shed R&D personnel The decline in performance abilities in R&D is far more critical than the loss of spending, according to Mustapha. "While you can switch expenditure on again, depending on economic circumstances, it's far more difficult to replace personnel. We need to rebuild all of that expertise, and building expertise means that you are actually a step further back." South Africa shines in space science Space science has emerged as the flagship science of South Africa. "We spend a lot on space science, and we also get cited a lot for the research we do, so that's probably the one standout area." Other important areas for R&D are converging technologies like nanotechnology and biotechnology, and HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. The 2019/20 survey results show that the greatest amount of R&D activity in research fields takes place in the medical and health sciences (21.5%), followed by the social sciences (16.9%).