South Africa’s science and technology funding agency, the National Research Foundation (NRF), has this week (Sunday to Thursday) been hosting the Science Granting Councils Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa (SGCI) Annual Forum. Established in March 2015, this unites the NRF’s counterparts in 17 African countries. The member States are Botswana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

South Africa is not a member of the SGCI but, through the NRF, helps fund it. The other non-member funders of the initiative are Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the German Research Foundation, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

“[T]he SGCI aims to strengthen the capacities of Science Granting Councils [SGCs] in the [17] member States,” explained the NRF. “Through investments, the SGCI has provided grants to eligible Councils to manage research calls that correspond to their national and regional research and development agendas. It has embarked on a drive to support select countries in West Africa to establish SGCs – while strengthening the existing research funding structures in other countries in the region.”

The SGCI was also helping the member Councils to draw up policy frameworks and structures to enable the creation of public-private partnerships. It also made possible collaborative projects within Africa’s regions.

The Annual Forum has allowed the member SGCs to report on, and discuss, accessing more funding for research and innovation. For example, the governments of Botswana, Malawi, Namibia and Tanzania have committed themselves to increasing their funding for research, and have started doing so, while government funding for Zambia’s National Science and Technology Council was recently increased by, effectively, 100%.

The meeting also facilitated the development of partnerships between the African SGCs and local and international actors in the sciences. It further helped them in ‘unlocking’ their successes in research, through generating new knowledge and creating new products.

The SGCI Annual Forum was one of a number of events held in parallel with the World Science Forum, being hosted in Cape Town by the South African Department of Science and Innovation.