Kenya remains Africa’s second biggest spender on research and development (R&D) – the process of creating new products and services or improving existing ones.
However, most of the R&D funds in Kenya come from foreign donors, said Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, the epidemiologist who heads the African Population and Health Research Centre, a research think tank based in Nairobi.
The biggest spender is South Africa, which spends 0.85 per cent of its GDP on research and development, followed by Kenya at 0.8 per cent.
“Foreign-funded research is aligned to the needs of the donor countries,” Dr Kyobutungi said.
“For instance, the priority for donors may be climate change while Kenya is more interested in infectious diseases.”
She spoke during the APHRC’s 20th-anniversary celebrations in Nairobi.
Gross domestic spending on R&D is defined as the total expenditure on R&D carried out by all resident companies, research institutes, university and government laboratories among others, in a country. It includes research funded from abroad.
For instance, while the Kenya Medical Research Institute has an annual budget of about Sh7 billion, it only gets about Sh1 billion from Treasury and gets the rest from foreign donors.
“Unless African governments step up, we will keep fitting into boxes that have been put up by foreign donors,” Dr Kyobutungi said.
Prof Alex Ezeh, a former head of the centre and now a don at US’s Drexel University, said the economic future of Africa is not in natural resources but in human capital.
“Many times the cost of not doing research is higher than the cost of research,” he said. “Imagine if we don’t do research on how to prevent outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola, where would we be?”
The global research and development expenditure, as a percentage of GDP based on 67 countries, was 1.3 per cent in 2020.
The Africa average is about 0.3 per cent.
Prof Tom Kariuki, head of the Nairobi-based non-profit Science for Africa (SFA) Foundation praised the Kenyan government.
“For me, the complaints about research being donor-funded is old fashioned because no one puts a gun on your head to force you to accept donor funds,” he said.
Prof Kariuki is a former head of the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa, a mentorship programme previously run by the African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi.
Yesterday’s meeting was also attended by Carole Kariuki, head of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, and Dr Fiona Wanjiku, CEO of the Mawazo Institute, an outfit that mentors female researchers.
The call for Kenya to increase R&D spending comes as the current government cuts funding for higher education.
The State Department for Higher Education and Research last week said it is facing a budget deficit of Sh39.5 billion for recurrent expenditure.
This was in a report to the National Assembly Departmental Committee on Education and Research.
The report said the recurrent expenditure requirement for the 2023/2024 Financial Year was Sh153.9 billion against an allocation of Sh114.3 billion.
“It’s worthwhile to note that there was a slight increment in net allocation as a result of allocations towards strategic intervention amounting to Sh6.9 billion,” the report said.
