Some African countries are investing more than was previously thought on science, according to a new report. Credit: SINCLAIR STAMMERS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

South Africa, Uganda and Malawi invested more than 1% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on science and technology in 2007, according to the first comprehensive survey of such spending in individual countries on the continent.

This puts them above the spending target that African governments are aiming to meet by 2010, adopted by heads of state at an African Union summit in 2007.

The survey, African Innovation Outlook 2010, was unveiled at a conference in Addis Ababa from 23–25 May. The data were prepared by the African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators Initiative (ASTII), a project conceived by African science ministers and carried out with assistance and funding from the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency.

The report collects science and technology investment (STI) data for 13 countries — Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Six other countries participated in the review, but did not provide detailed data.

South Africa outdoes the rest in absolute terms — spending nearly 30 times more than Malawi and more than 8 times more than Nigeria, the runner up. For the rest of the countries surveyed, research and development (R&D) intensity was between 0.20% and 0.48% of their GDP.

Foundation for experimentation

However, the mix of funding sources varies greatly between countries. Mozambique gets more than half of its R&D funding from abroad, whereas for Ghana and South Africa the corresponding figure is about one-tenth of the total. The business sector accounts for over half of Ghana's R&D spend, but less than 5% in Uganda, Zambia and Senegal.

"This initiative is the first major African-led, politically authorised effort to generate a comprehensive and comparative survey of STI on the continent. It establishes a foundation for Africa to continue experimenting and measure the effects of STI on its economic and social transformation," the report says.

The report also features a bibliometric analysis of scientific output in the participating countries. It shows that medical research dominates African research, having overtaken agricultural research, which was the leading field in the 1990s. But more funding is needed, it says, because Africa's share of worldwide publications is shrinking.

The report's authors urge caution in interpreting the data they present, as there are several "serious omissions". Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania did not survey their business sectors — Nigeria's total R&D spend in particular would be much higher if business R&D was included. In Mozambique, the higher-education sector was not surveyed. And Nigeria and Uganda failed to include the private non-profit sector.

An informed observer, who was involved in the early stages of the survey but asked to remain anonymous, also warned against interpreting the report's high figures for Uganda and Malawi as guarantees of health. "Many African countries get considerable amounts of funding for clinical trials. In some cases such funding reduces the local system to data capture. It's not the kind of sustainable expenditure on R&D that Africa needs," the observer said.

Contrasting views

The report also conflicts with other African R&D surveys covering the same period. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Institute of Statistics estimates sub-Saharan Africa's average R&D spend (excluding South Africa) in 2007 at 0.3% of GDP — significantly lower than the average spend of the 13 countries surveyed by ASTII, which was around 0.5% of GDP.

It also disagrees with South Africa's own annual R&D survey, which determined that the country's R&D intensity was 0.93% of GDP in the 2007/08 financial year.

The reason for the discrepancy with South Africa's official R&D intensity figure is that ASTII used GDP figures from the African Development Bank for all the countries, says Claes Brundenius, a research policy specialist at Lund University in Sweden who helped to compile the African Innovation Outlook. For South Africa this might have been different from the national GDP figure used in the official R&D intensity calculation, resulting in this slight discrepancy, he says.

The survey will be repeated at regular intervals and be stored and analysed by an African Observatory for Science, Technology and Innovation to be established in Equatorial Guinea. More countries, and more indicators — some specifically developed to measure African science — will be added in future reports.