COVER STORY
SCALING UP SCIENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA Government tries to grow a competitive research enterprise in FIVE KEY AREAS BRITT E. ERICKSON, C&EN WASHINGTON
South Africa At A Glance
tant, but priorities could shift after the output is less than 0.5% of the total global next general election in 2014. output. The country has high aspirations of In one of his first moves since taking boosting that number through investments the helm, Hanekom approved an extra Key economic sectors: in research and workforce development. $90 million over three years to train graduAgriculture, energy, But with major social challenges, such as ate students and interns, increase funding manufacturing, mining poverty and disease, and an unemployment for emerging researchers—particularly services, tourism, transport rate hovering around 25%, South Africa is women and black scientists—and create R&D priorities: Bioeconomy, energy struggling to revitalize itself as a contribusix new centers of excellence. The centers, security, global change, human and social tor to global science. first established in 2004, attract highly dynamics, space science Overseeing an annual R&D budget of skilled scientists and enable researchers Unemployment rate: 25.5% (third quarter about $500 million, Derek A. Hanekom, to collaborate across disciplines in areas 2012) South Africa’s recently appointed minister deemed locally important and internationPopulation: 50.6 million (2011) of science and technology, recognizes that ally competitive. Number of universities: 23 it won’t be easy for South Africa to become Hanekom is no stranger to the DepartShare of global research output: 0.4% a major player in science and innovation. ment of Science & Technology. He served But he is confident that investing in huas its deputy minister for eight years before Amount of gross domestic product man capital—the people who are going to assuming the top post. He has strong ties spent on R&D: 0.92% generate knowlwith the African edge—will reposiNational ConThe future site of Lonza-Pelchem pharmaceutical plant for manufacturing active ingredients in HIV/ tion South Africa gress (ANC), the AIDS drugs is just outside of Pretoria. to compete on the current national global stage. Hanekom took office in October, at about the halfway point of the Most of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array Department of (SKA), seen here in an artist’s rendering, Science & Techwill be built in the Northern Cape. nology’s 10-year Rooibos tea is
The world’s largest titanium
primarily cultivated on plantations near Clanwilliam to protect the biodiversity of wild species.
strategy, which was developed in 2008. He intends to stick with the five R&D priorities that were identified at that time. They are human and social dynamics, energy security, bioeconomy, global change, and space science. The current administration sees those five areas as critically impor-
mine is located in Richards Bay.
Hundreds of
wineries are located in the Stellenbosch area along South Africa’s oldest wine route.
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Honeybush, a plant
indigenous to the fynbos area ( ) of South Africa, is growing in popularity as a tea.
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governing party in South Africa. He spent more than two years in prison during the 1980s for working with the then-banned ANC during apartheid. He also served as the minister of agriculture and land affairs during former president Nelson Mandela’s term in office, from 1994 to 1999. For the past two-and-a-half months, Hanekom has been jetsetting across South Africa to various speaking engagements
SKA ORGANISATION/SWINBURNE ASTRONOMY PRODUCTIONS (SKA) , WIK IMEDIA COMMONS (ROOIBOS TEA), SHUTTERSTOCK (GRAPES), SOUTH AFRICAN HONEYBUSH TEA ASSOC IAT IO N(HONEYBUSH), RIO TINTO (RICHARDS BAY)
SOUTH AFRICA’S scientific research
THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE is getting
South Africa to spend more money on R&D, he told C&EN. The South African government is struggling to spend close to 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D, and private-sector R&D is declining, he noted. South Africa gradually increased how much it spent on R&D from 0.67% of its GDP when the country was democratized in 1994 to a peak of 0.95% in 2007. But the latest figures show that number has slipped to 0.92%. “Our target at the moment is to get to 1.50%, hopefully by 2016,” Hanekom said, acknowledging that meeting this goal is going to be “tough.” In line with the 10-year strategy, Hanekom intends to move South Africa toward a knowledge-based economy. To achieve that outcome “you need an institutional framework in place that will encourage both the generation and the transfer of knowledge,” he said. Hanekom pointed to the mining sector as an example of where earnings could be optimized through the transfer of cuttingedge technologies from the research sector to industry. South Africa has about 80% of the world’s titanium, he said. The department has set up a pilot plant to develop a cost-effective, novel way of producing titanium powder using laser technology. The titanium powder will ultimately be converted into aerospace components using three-dimensional manufacturing technologies. The goal is to transform the mining sector from an exporter of raw resources into an exporter of value-added products. “We want to optimize potential earnings through value addition,” Hanekom said.
Of the five areas identified in the 10year strategy, Hanekom is most passionate about human and social dynamics. “In a country coming from an apartheid system, we have major social challenges that need to be understood,” he said. Research is needed on the effects of poverty and responses to poverty, on education and the education system, and on cultural diversity, he stressed. Such research is important because it “helps us target our government programs and understand the extent to which they are having the desired impact.”
sis in Japan in March 2011, the government will “have to do some careful reflection,” Hanekom said. “We do have uranium in South Africa, and we do have coal,” he noted, adding that the cost of coal is rising every year. But the cost of running a coal-fired plant is still less expensive than the cost of constructing a new nuclear power plant. Boosting South Africa’s bioeconomy has become a top R&D priority for the country. In the next few months, the Department of Science & Technology plans to release a broad bioeconomy strategy, Hanekom said. MIKE HUTCHINGS/REUTERS/NEWSCO M
and flying regularly between offices in Pretoria and Cape Town. C&EN had a brief opportunity to meet with him last month during one of his stops in Cape Town. In a spacious office overlooking Table Mountain, in the high-security Parliament building downtown, Hanekom sipped a cup of rooibos tea—a popular tea grown only in South Africa—and candidly spoke about where he thinks science in South Africa is headed.
LABOR TENSION South In terms of energy seFrom farmer to pharma, the Africa’s growing wine curity, South Africa plans strategy will focus on bioindustry is being threatened to invest in research on technology and realizing the by rising social tensions renewables, such as solar potential of South Africa’s in the Western Cape. and wind, and clean energy Farmworkers seen here biological resources and rich went on strike earlier this technologies, Hanekom biodiversity. The main areas month, demanding a daily noted. South Africa curof funding will be in agriculwage of 150 rand, about $17, rently gets about 90% of its or about twice as much as ture, health, and industrial electricity from coal, about they currently receive. applications. 5% from a nuclear reactor in The goal of the bioCape Town, and about 5% economy strategy is to make from hydroelectric plants. biotechnology a useful tool Nonhydroelectric renewables contribute in agriculture, to get better results from the an insignificant amount to the country’s agricultural sector, and to address healthelectricity production. related challenges. A particular emphasis of South Africa is considering more nuclear the strategy will be on getting new drugs to power, but after the Fukushima nuclear crimarket, Hanekom said. About 5.5 million people are infected with HIV in South Africa, the largest number in any single country, representing approximately 18% of the population aged 15 to 49. Many of those HIV-infected people also have tuberculosis. Some people blame the country’s
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COVER STORY
people are taking them. In addition, pills are now available to help prevent the transmission of HIV to people who have not yet acquired the virus. The challenge is to reach as many people as possible and make treatments as affordable as possible. Pharmaceuticals are one of South Africa’s biggest imports, Hanekom pointed out. Importing the active ingredient in HIV/AIDS drugs remains a major cost, he said. In an effort to cut import costs, the South African government is partnering with South Africa-based fluorochemical company Pelchem and Switzerlandbased pharmaceutical company Lonza to build a $200 million pharmaceutical plant about 21 miles west of Pretoria that will produce the active ingredients in HIV/AIDS drugs. BR IT T ER ICKSO N /C& EN
former president, Thabo M. Mbeki, who served two terms from 1999 to 2008, for South Africa’s high incidence of HIV. Mbeki, and his minister of health, Manto TshabalalaMsimang, questioned the link between HIV and AIDS. Mbeki banned anti retrovirals from use in public state hospitals. The current president, Jacob G. Zuma, reversed the ban when he took office in 2009 and pledged to ramp up HIV prevention and treatment programs for children and high-risk groups. Zuma launched a campaign in Hanekom 2010 to promote HIV testing and counseling, publicly disclosing that the results of his own HIV test were negative. Zuma was acquitted in a 2006 rape trial, in which he told the court that he had unprotected sex with his HIVpositive accuser. South Africa’s HIV testing campaign appears to be making a difference. “People who are HIV positive are living longer,” Hanekom said. Antiretrovirals are available, and more and more HIV-infected
IN TERMS OF AGRICULTURE, South Af-
rica is focusing its efforts on biotechnology research that could improve crop yields. South Africa is a net exporter of agricultural products, and as in most developing
countries that are industrializing, agriculture’s percentage of GDP is declining. Nonetheless agriculture remains an important employer in South Africa. The three main crops in South Africa are maize, soy, and cotton, but the country grows a variety of different crops because of its diverse climatic zones and conditions. For example, the country is known for its deciduous and citrus fruits, tropical fruits, kiwi, and avocados. However, much of the country is semiarid and only suitable for raising livestock. In these regions, wool is a relatively large export product. Wine is also a fairly large export product (see page 16). “New grape cultivars are doing better with a greater degree of climatic divergence,” Hanekom pointed out. “We are seeing production in areas that were a couple of decades ago deemed not suitable for wine production, especially for white wines.” The growth of the wine industry is a result of research funded by the wine industry, although the government does provide some money, particularly for human capital development and laboratory equipment. In some cases, the government’s Agricultural Research Council contributes 49% of the funding for a research project, and the wine industry pays the rest, said
OPEN ACC ESS COMES TO AF R ICA
South Africa Hosts Berlin 10 Conference Hundreds of scholars gathered in Stellenbosch, South Africa, last month to build a stronger case for making the results of scientific research freely accessible worldwide. Calling scientific knowledge the motor of economic development, delegates to the international gathering, the Berlin 10 Conference on Open Access, urged scientists to radically change how they evaluate and communicate their work. The Berlin conference, an annual event first held in 2003 in Berlin, aims to raise momentum for increased access to the scholarly literature. This year’s meeting, Berlin 10, was held for the first time in Africa. It attracted more
than 265 participants from 37 countries, including 16 African countries. Berlin 10 focused on removing financial barriers that limit access to the scholarly literature, particularly for academic institutions in Africa. Open-access advocates encouraged African higher education institutions to develop institutional repositories and become independent digital academic publishers so they can distribute the work of their own scholars without the limits imposed by commercial publishers. “Academic libraries, especially those in Africa, have limited access to critical research information. This stifles the growth of African research and
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its capacity to find solutions to the plethora of problems confronting the continent,” Derek Hanekom, South Africa’s minister of science and technology, told attendees at the conference gala dinner. “The adoption of open-access principles, which can help to remove these financial barriers to access to information, is one of the most progressive ways of growing and showcasing African research.” Although Hanekom supports open access, his department has not made it a requirement for grantees to make the results of their research freely accessible after a certain period of time. The U.K.’s seven governmentfunded grant agencies, known
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collectively as Research Councils U.K., will begin implementing such a policy in April 2013 for research that it funds, and the European Union will begin implementing a similar policy starting with research it funds in 2014. The German government is also working to implement an open-access policy. The publishing landscape is changing, Russel Botman, rector and vice chancellor of Stellenbosch University, said as he opened the meeting. “In this time of flux, there is a window of opportunity for us to improve two things, particularly for the developing world—access and visibility.” Open access will allow people to participate more fully in the knowledge community, Botman stressed. “At the same time it increases the visibility
“Information will need to be shared around the clock between Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.” Gerard Martin, executive manager of Winetech, a group that serves as a liaison between wine researchers and the South African wine industry. Another R&D priority for South Africa is global change, particularly research on the effects of climate change and how human activity alters the environment. Earlier this month, South Africa’s National Space Agency signed an agreement with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre to leverage resources in the area of remote-sensing technologies for monitoring atmospheric, terrestrial, and marine environments. The goal of the partnership is to better understand the dynamics of the environment and to develop technologies to support agricultural monitoring and disaster risk reduction. A final R&D priority is space science. With vast amounts of land devoid of people, the Northern Cape has become a popular site for radio astronomy. Earlier this year, the Department of Science & Technology made a successful bid for South Africa to cohost the $2 billion Square of research coming from the developing world. And thereby, greater equity is achieved.” Berlin 10 was organized around the theme of networked scholarship and the production of knowledge. Conversations focused on the need for a free and open Internet to disseminate research information to large audiences. Several participants stressed the importance of becoming engaged in ongoing deliberations related to who controls the infrastructure of the Internet. Some speakers urged researchers to ignore journal impact factors and instead evaluate research by the impact it has on innovation, health, and the
Kilometre Array (SKA), an ambitious project involving multiple countries, to build the world’s largest radio telescope. The core SKA site, in the Karoo region of South Africa where sheep outnumber people, is expected to host 2,000 telescope dishes, each about 40-50 feet in diameter, by 2024. An additional 1,000 dishes will be spread across South Africa and eight other African countries by the same target date. Seven prototype dishes called the KAT-7 are already in place at the core site. “A few years ago South Africans knew very little about radio astronomy. Now we are playing a leading role in the biggest scientific project the world has ever seen,” said SKA Project Director Bernie Fanaroff. “SKA is reversing the brain drain. It is creating a critical mass of young engineers and scientists with expertise in next-generation technologies,” Fanaroff noted. The Department of Science & Technology sees SKA as a way to expand South Africa’s high-tech industry and build science capacity. South African engineers are playing a leading role in the design and
wealth of societies. Participants considered various article-level metrics for assessing research, including the number of citations, downloads, or how often a paper is highlighted in blogs, wikis, or RSS feeds. A few participants argued that journal impact factors are an obstacle to open access. A journal’s impact factor reflects the average number of citations per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. The impact factor correlates well with the perceived quality of a journal, said Tom Olijhoek, a scientific consultant with the SURF Foundation, a Dutch firm that promotes network and
information technology services. But the impact factor of a journal says little about the quality of individual articles, he emphasized. “There is a weak correlation between individual article citation rate and the journal impact factor.” The first seven Berlin meetings were held in Europe, with the goal of defining open access and refining various tools and strategies to make open access a reality. The arguments for open access began to change when the meeting moved away from Europe, first to China in 2010, then to the U.S. in 2011, and this year to South Africa. Next year the meeting moves back to Berlin.
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manufacturing of the SKA precursor dishes, as well as in developing technologies for handling the massive amounts of data SKA will receive. It is unclear how much the project will ultimately cost, but “from a scientist’s perspective, there’s a little bit of anxiety about how much of the science budget SKA will take,” said Neil Coville, a materials chemistry professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. Nonetheless, “it will create jobs for physicists for years to come,” he acknowledged. HANEKOM BELIEVES that free access to
the scientific literature will be essential for SKA and other South African research endeavors to succeed. “Information will need to be shared around the clock between Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas,” he told attendees at a gala dinner last month held in conjunction with the Berlin 10 Open Access Conference, in Stellenbosch. Unfortunately, not all African institutions can afford pricey journal subscriptions, he stressed. Hanekom encouraged researchers to publish in open-access journals. Open access will put South African research in the spotlight and help boost the country’s research output, he said. The trick is to find the right balance between adequate intellectual property protection, which provides incentive for researchers to develop new products, and the right to access knowledge, he noted. “Knowledge should not be the domain of the few, but knowledge should be made available to the many in the public interest.” As South Africa moves toward a more knowledge-based economy and tries to increase its research output, it faces what some people are calling hangover issues, or the enduring effects of colonization and apartheid. “We have to get real about the context we are operating in,” said Michelle Willmers, manager of the Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme at the University of Cape Town. Inequality in health care and education, the digital divide, extreme gender disparity, and problems of corruption—those, she said, are the challenges confronting South Africa today. ◾
