Disrupting Idea needed for Improving Africa's Research Contribution

Today, Africans are the architects of their development, not just beneficiaries. The new model for development  is focussing on partnerships — with African governments, businesses, universities and civil society.

But Africa will continue to be held back if we do not immediately invest in research and development. It was agreed at the African Union Heads of State summit in 2006 that African governments should target 1% of their GDP spending on research and if that target is not met continent’s development will be stalled.

We must join hands with strong and credible international partners to invest in local research. Without funding and the necessary regulatory environment and policies, the benefits of the scientific results emanating from research work won’t be harvested. As private university college we fully support the same and has already taken significant steps to catalyze the growth.

Africa as a continent is growing with fast pace. Astute international investors are finding promise in the African digital renaissance, where a decade of rapid economic growth is cause for consumer spending to exceed an estimated $1 trillion annually by 2020, according to Forbes. In the continent, the middle class is growing, populations are urbanizing, IT infrastructure is improving and cell phones and mobile payments are more widely used than in most of the world. All of this has combined into a recent technology startup boom that has international investors salivating for more.

As per Eran Feinstein, founder of 3G Direct Pay Limited, a global e-commerce and online payments solutions for the travel and related industries, there are eight reasons why Africa is attracting investment in Research and Tech innovation. They are population growth, economics of scale, consumer base, infrastructure, education, diversification, rising trends of tech ventures and social innovations.

We as members of academia believe research for Africa, solving Africa's grand challenges, has to be done on the ground in Africa and this is why we need R&D lab on the continent associated with universities here. Some of the tech-giants, like IBM has invested heavily in the past few years on R&D and tech-labs in South Africa and Kenya. But more is required to harness the potential for a 12% world population living on this continent. And the investment should not be just about networks, it's not just about PCs. It's about the end economic impact, it's about the skills to be developed.

In proving the value of technology as the enabler for that development, it's not just creating consumption of technology, but it's actually more importantly creating the ability for knowledge to be developed, for technology to actually be built in Africa. Because that actually drives the technology ecosystem, that drives the IT industry, that makes technology relevant.

Below are some of the statistics available from the World Bank on research on continent.

Available World Bank data collated from three sub-Saharan African regions—East, West and Central, and Southern, could however help African policy makers prioritise science and better shift resources. But what the numbers found is startling:

1. Sub-Saharan Africa only accounts for under 1% of the world’s research output, despite having 12% of the world’s population. But this statistic hides the gains: between 2003 and 2012 the region more than doubled its yearly research output, raising its share of global research from 0.44% to 0.72% over the period.

2. However, sub-Saharan Africa research output in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (so-called STEM research) significantly lags behind other subject areas. Excluding South Africa, research in the physical sciences and STEM makes up only 29% of all research in the region, compared to an average of 68% in Malaysia, a much-cited Asian Tiger, and which had the same research output as Africa in 2003.

3. It gets worse: the share of STEM research in sub-Saharan Africa has declined by 0.2% every year since 2002. In South Africa it is down 0.1%.  Fewer articles (32% below the global average) cited the continent’s science research, and this number has stayed the same since 2003, suggesting less quantity, and quality.

4. There is very little intra-African collaboration. Collaborations without a South African or international collaborator make up only 2% of all East African research output, just 0.9% in West and Central Africa, and 2.9% in southern Africa. Trends also suggest that global corporations do not rely much on African-generated knowledge to aid their competitiveness.

5. A higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would suggest more capacity to invest in research and training the researcher. One would thus expect South Africa to lead in terms of research productivity; however West and Central Africa, and East Africa are slightly more productive in terms of articles per million dollars. South Africa rebounds in terms of population, at 242.6 articles per million people in 2011. The closest region to it is West and Central Africa, at 47.8 articles per million people.

Above facts clearly states that the continent needs more collaborated effort to promote research and development at the university level. Our focus should shift towards STEM initiatives, so that the future African generation are self-dependent on technology. At this point we also have to accept the importance of private universities and their contribution towards capacity building in the continent. Universities, both public and private, and technology companies should invest in R&D lab within the continent and increase more intra-continent collaboration, that’s the way forward.