Image: GovernmentZA [CC BY-ND 2.0], via Flickr
South Africa’s main research funder hit in 2022 spending round
The National Research Foundation of South Africa will have its government budget allocation cut by 9 per cent in nominal terms in 2022/23, the country’s finance minister has revealed.
Presenting his first national budget on 23 February, Enoch Godongwana (pictured) allocated R4.3 billion (US$280 million) to the NRF in the coming financial year, a R420m drop from last year.
The NRF’s budget will not regain its 2021/22 level of R4.72bn in the next two years, but it will rebound somewhat. The NRF is forecast to get R4.68bn in 2023/24 and R4.7bn in 2024/25.
Research Professional News asked the Department of Science and the Innovation and the NRF why there was such a dip in the latter’s budget this year. Neither had not responded by the time this article was published.
However, in the budget documents for 2022/23, the NRF’s research and innovation support takes a R134m hit and the national research infrastructure platform programme falls by R181m.
Speaking to Research Professional News earlier this week, the former deputy chief executive in charge of research and innovation at NRF, Gansen Pillay, warned against over-reliance on the foundation for support.
“My humble advice is that researchers must apply for funding outside of the NRF and South Africa,” he said.
Real-term cuts
Overall, the Department of Science and Innovation will see a modest increase of R200m in the 2022/23 financial year.
However, this 2.2 per cent rise is below South Africa’s inflation rate, which in 2021 was 4.4 per cent, translating to a cut in real terms.
The Department will receive R9.13bn in 2022/23. This is predicted to increase to R9.25bn in 2023/24 and R9.66bn in 2024/25, representing an average 2 per cent annual growth over the three-year budget framework.
South Africa’s inflation is projected to be about 4.5 per cent in both 2022 and 2023.
More nominal cuts
Other entities besides the NRF saw nominal budget cuts.
The 2022/23 budgets of the Human Sciences Research Council and Academy of Science of South Africa were cut by R61m and R7.5m, respectively.
The South African National Space Agency budget was also cut, by R48m. SANSA’s budget will continue to fall by 8.5 per cent up to 2024/25, because of an anticipated decrease in revenue, mostly from the parliamentary grant, the budget says.
Meanwhile, the budget of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research sees an increase of R338m in 2022/23, while the Technology Innovation Agency rises by R10.2m.
Godongwana made no mention of science or research in his budget speech. The finance minister mentioned fee-free higher education as one of the government’s “prioritised spending areas” with an extra R32.6bn support allocated to needy students spread over the next three years.