The National Survey of Research and Experimental Development is a delicious smorgasbord of numbers, a snapshot of South Africa’s National System of Innovation. For those who don’t have the time to read the report (or have an aversion to deciphering the numbers), here are the highlights:
1. In 2014-15, South Africa spent R29.345-billion on research and development (R&D). That’s up from the R25.661-billion in 2013-14. At constant Rand values, it was an increase of 8%.
2. Almost half of this R&D cash went to labour costs.
3. Unfortunately, we’ve once against missed our ambitious targets. Prior to 2008, the goal was to spend 1% of gross domestic product on R&D. Government is now eyeing 1.5%, which is a bit like asking for R1,000 when you can’t scrape together R100. In 2014-15, the country as a whole — which includes government, business, and non-governmental organisations — spend 0.77% of its treasure on R&D. That is up from 0.73% the previous year.
4. Government has — for the third year in a row — spent more on R&D than business. Government, in this instance, also includes universities. This a problem, though, as internationally business is usually the major driver of R&D: R&D leads to new products and services, making companies more competitive.
5. State-owned enterprises account for 15% of business spend on R&D.
6. The good news is that this business investment in R&D is starting to see some recovery: from R11.783-billion in 2013-14 to R13.291-billion in 2014-15. Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said at the launch: “Business R&D spending is showing signs of recovery. We wish it was robust, but it is showing signs of recovery.”
7. Mining and quarrying continued to take a beating, with business’ R&D spend in this field declining by 20%.
8. Most of the R&D undertaken in South Africa is applied research (48.8%) rather than basic research (24.3%).
9. The number of researchers in the system (by headcount) continues to increase: from 42,828 in 2012-13 through to 48,479 in 2014-15, which is quite a jump. Credit for this 5,561 rise is mainly due to doctoral candidates and postdocs.
10. A bonus on this year’s “key findings” is that they have started to include “Female researcher numbers” as a stand alone category to tracked. Women account for 44% of researchers, which puts us up among some of the world’s most gender-transformed countries. The latest OECD data puts France at 25.6% (2012), Germany at 26.8% (2012), and Russia at 37.4%.
Where’s the data ?
————————–
Hi Sarah,
I know this is journalism, and many would not consider it “research” (no offence intended !), but I’m certain that at some point these figures or interpretations will be questioned. It would be really helpful if you could cite the data sources. At least this would stimulate the publication of open data, and contribute to a culture of expecting to have access to public data like this.
I know this is asking a lot, but perhaps you may not have considered that there are readers who would expect such transparency from journalists :)
Hi Bruce,
The data source is there: “National Survey of Research and Experimental Development 2014-15”.
It might be asking a lot of my readers, but I assume they know how to Google. :)