Spending on research and development (R&D) in SA increased to R10.1 billion last year from the R7.5 billion spent in various sciences in 2002/03, says the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
The figures are contained in the findings of the latest national survey on research and development, due to be made public by the minister of science and technology, Mosibudi Mangena, in Parliament today.
The survey says in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), R&D spending now represents 0.81% of the country`s output compared with 0.75%. However, this is still far behind most developed countries, with Sweden spending the equivalent of 4.27% of its GDP, followed by Finland with 3.46%.
The US`s R&D expenditure measured 2.60% and the average for the 25 European Union member states was 2.26%. The European Union has set a goal of achieving an average R&D expenditure of 3% of GDP by 2010.
In comparison with other developing countries that provide R&D data, SA spends proportionately more on R&D than Argentina (0.41%) but less than China (1.22%) and the Russian Federation (1.28%).
SA has a total of 25 185 full-time equivalent R&D personnel, comprising researchers, technicians and other support staff. While SA`s R&D expenditure is fairly high compared to that of other developing countries, the total number of researchers is low at 2.2 researchers per thousand employees. Comparative figures for researchers are Argentina 1.8, Russian Federation 7.4 and China 1.1.
According to the survey, the demographic profile of researchers in SA is changing slowly but surely. Women researchers now comprise 38% of the total researchers compared to 11.2% in Japan and 28.4% in Norway. In developing countries, Argentina leads the way with 50.5% women researchers.
Most South African R&D is performed in the engineering sciences research field (comprising 24.8% of total R&D), followed by the natural sciences (21.9%) and the medical and health sciences (13.5%).
The business sector is the major performer and financer of R&D in the country and performs 55.5% of all R&D undertaken, while financing 52% of total R&D. The higher education sector undertakes 20.5% of national R&D while government (including the science councils) performs 21.9% of the total but finances 28% of R&D. About 10% of SA`s R&D is financed from abroad, says the DST.
The DST commissioned the National Survey of Financial and Human Resource Inputs into R&D, from the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators at the HSRC Knowledge Management Group in Cape Town.
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