He who pays the piper calls the tune, so is the reality of some of the country’s scientists at various universities who often rely on external funding from organisations and other governments to get their research projects off the ground.

Universities are battling to retain skilled, young, and promising scientists and, at times, have had to divert from the country's priority research areas and focus on what the funders want researched — therefore, robbing the country of key scientific solutions.

Research and development (R&D) in science and technology refers to the systematic process of investigating, experimenting, and innovating to create new products, processes, or technologies by applying scientific knowledge to develop new applications and advance the field.

It often involves creative work to increase the stock of knowledge about a subject area. These include finding a new enzyme, discovering a new vaccine platform, or making a vaccine better.

Professor Benjamin Kagina, a principal investigator and project director of NISH (National Immunization Technical Advisory Group [NITAG] Support Hub) at the University of Cape Town, said funding for research in African countries is poor.

“If you look at the allocation of funding for research by the government, it is a joke. As universities, we rely on external funding — and this external funding is competitive and unpredictable. This means that some of our young and promising scientists will not be able to stay in university because we don’t have the security of funding.

“We definitely need skilled scientists to strengthen research and development of vaccines. We are unable to retain skills due to funding. That is big,” Kagina said.

He added that in many cases, some of the external funders will dictate the priority research areas, “a challenge which leads to universities not focusing on priority research areas for our country because we do not own the funding. So, we tend to align to what the funders want”.

He said universities continue to rely on external funding, and it is always insufficient to sustain scientists who are in universities.

“I know very few skilled people that have left for different reasons, and we definitely need these skilled people if we are to build a sustainable and successful vaccine manufacturing capacity on the continent. And that again is linked to funding,” he said.

Also, related to this overreliance on research funding, for example, US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze funding — a lot of research funding has been affected by that, he said.

Kagina said universities need a structured platform to monetise their projects to reduce reliance on external funding and become self-sustaining.

He said that while there is the Technology Innovation Agency, a public entity based in Pretoria that aims to support neo-innovations in science and technology to link the innovators of these technologies with partners/ businesses to scale up, universities need a more structured platform.

“If we can have a forum where universities present their work, and investors are in that forum including the government, to foster that kind of partnership. I think that could alleviate some of the challenges that the universities face,” he said.

Professor Patrick Arbuthnot, the director of the Wits/SAMRC Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit (AGTRU), said doing research and development projects is expensive.

“It costs a lot of money to do this work, and we have been fortunate to be supported by the WHO, other organisations, governments, and philanthropists.

“We need to be self-sustaining. It’s all very well getting grant funds to help us get things off the ground. We have gotten off the ground, but we do need to generate some revenue to keep this enterprise going — because it will be a waste to let it all come to nothing when funding runs out, which is not too far away actually,” Arbuthnot said.

He added that they need to monetise projects “just to make sure that we are self-sustaining without being greedy and trying to make a huge amount of money for selfish reasons”.

He said their research on HIV and TB mRNA vaccines had been disrupted.

“We were working on the mRNA for HIV, but unfortunately that work has had to be suspended because of the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) suspension in the country. They were supporting the new mRNA in HIV vaccine work that we were doing — and this is unfortunate. But that’s the way that it is. We hope to be able to revive that work,” Arbuthnot said.

Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a kind of RNA that conveys genetic information from DNA to protein by way of the processes of transcription and translation.

glenda gray

How research underfunding robs South Africa of scientific innovations