Presented during the AOSpP Delivery Phase Meeting, 2-3 Sept. 2019, Library of Alexandrina, Egypt

1. Dr Molapo Qhobela
CEO
National Research Foundation
Science for the Future The Future of Science

2. A Global Perspective
For every
minute on
the Internet
in 2019…..

3. International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor.
A Global Perspective: Multi-National Mega Science Projects
•Budget:$40 billion by 2030
•Built in France and funded by seven
countries.
•ITER aims to build a bit of the sun in a
laboratory
•Conventional nuclear reactors use fission to
break heavy atoms to generate energy.
Instead of using radioactive materials,
nuclear fusion reactors like ITER, use light
elements like hydrogen and helium to
generate clean green energy

4. •Budget: $950mil
•Consists of two detectors in the US and a third
detector in Italy
•LIGO is an experiment in astronomy and
fundamental physics to detect cosmic
gravitational waves.
•LIGO has already detected gravitational waves
and the resulting paper was co-authored by
1000 scientists
•Nobel Prize for Physics (2017)
•India is setting up a detector facility in
Maharashtra by 2025 to improve coverage &
accuracy
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory .
A Global Perspective: Multi-National Mega Science Projects

5. •Budget: €850mil
•Funded by twelve countries including South
Africa
•The SKA project is an effort to build the world’s
largest radio telescope – one hundred times
more sensitive than any current radio telescope
•SKA has brought together a wealth of the
world’s finest scientists, engineers and policy
makers to bring the project to fruition
•SKA1 MID will be built in Africa
•SKA will yield Nobel prize winning science – its
just a matter of time……Schematic of the Square Kilometre Array
Radio Telescope in Africa.
A Global Perspective: Multi-National Mega Science Projects

6. Africa at a Glance
African economies have made tangible gains in the first decade of the
twenty-first century however:
• For growth to result in economic transformation, it must be knowledge-
based and innovation-driven;
• Key consideration is that economies with sustained investments in
science, technology and innovation (STI), that have the capacity to
transform data into information, information into knowledge and
inventions into innovations in order to drive national competitiveness
and improve social welfare.

7. Africa at A Glance
•Population: 1.3 Billion
•Percentage of Global Population: 17%
•Economically Active: 37%
•Female population: 50%
•Urbanised Population: 41%
•GDP Growth rate: 3.7%
•GDP per capita: $1,849

8. R&D Intensity (GERD as a Percentage of GDP)
•R&D Intensity: 0.4% on average
•R&D intensity target (AU): 1%
•R&D spend per capita: <$100
•Contribution to world research
outputs: 2.2%
•Researchers per million of population:
198

9. Research Outputs for Africa 2009-2018 (Web of Science)
North
42%
Southern
31%
East
12%
West
12%
Central
3%
•World publications: 24,900,000
•Africa publications: 548,000
•Co-authored publications: 63%

10. African Contribution to World Outputs 2009-2018
4.3%
1.7%
2.0%
1.7% 1.7% 1.6%
2.4%
4.4%
3.3%
5.7%
1.9%
2.8%
4.7%
1.1%
0.8%
3.2%
2.1%
4.4%
1.5%
3.0% 2.9%
AgriculturalSciences
Biology&Biochemistry
Chemistry
ClinicalMedicine
ComputerScience
Economics&Business
Engineering
Environment/Ecology
Geosciences
Immunology
MaterialsScience
Mathematics
Microbiology
MolecularBiology&
Genetics
Neuroscience&Behavior
Pharmacology&
Toxicology
Physics
Plant&AnimalScience
Psychiatry/Psychology
SocialSciences,general
SpaceScience
Per Discipline

11. African Contribution to World Outputs 2009-2018
0.93
0.82
0.94
0.82 0.82
0.96 0.94
0.82
1.05
0.95 0.90
1.00
0.88
1.09
0.98
0.88
1.07
1.64
AgriculturalSciences
Biology&Biochemistry
ClinicalMedicine
ComputerScience
Economics&Business
Engineering
Environment/Ecology
Geosciences
Immunology
Mathematics
Microbiology
MolecularBiology&
Genetics
Pharmacology&
Toxicology
Physics
Plant&AnimalScience
Psychiatry/Psychology
SocialSciences,general
SpaceScience
Category Normalised Citation
Category Normalised Citation Impact Global Average

12. Percentage International Co-Authorship 2009-2018
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Africa Global Baseline
What is the basis for this co-authorship?
344,000 of the 548,000 publications are co-authored

13. Co-Authorship per Country 2009-2018
78,381
56,572
47,597
27,592 26,240
18,960 15,782 15,599 15,481 14,695 13,920 13,464
USA
FRANCE
UNITEDKINGDOM
GERMANY(FEDREPGER)
SAUDIARABIA
CANADA
ITALY
AUSTRALIA
SPAIN
NETHERLANDS
CHINAMAINLAND
SWITZERLAND

14. Open vs Paid Access: 2009-2018
36%
26%
14% 19%
37%
30% 53% 51% 60% 45% 56% 39% 46% 66% 43% 45%
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
SOUTHAFRICA
EGYPT
TUNISIA
ALGERIA
NIGERIA
MOROCCO
KENYA
ETHIOPIA
UGANDA
GHANA
TANZANIA
CAMEROON
SENEGAL
MALAWI
SUDAN
ZIMBABWE
Open Access Paid Access

15. The Current Model
Journal Access for a
limited time
only
Subscription
Costs
$???
APC
$???

16. The World is Changing
Free Journal Access in
Perpetuity
APCs

17. The World is Changing
The Open Access 2020 Initiative (OA2020) aims to achieve the benefits
of the open information environment conceived 15 years ago:
• Transform the core of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to OA
publishing in accordance with community-specific publication preferences;
• Engage all parties involved in scholarly publishing, in particular universities,
research institutions, funders, libraries, and publishers in transformative actions
to achieve a rapid and efficient transition for the benefit of scholarship and
society at large;
• Pursue this transformation process by converting resources currently spent on
journal subscriptions into funds to support sustainable OA business models.

18. African Open Science Platform
•Data intensive research is a
foundational approach to social
challenges
•The strengthening of the research
enterprise on the continent is a given
•Necessary to adopt an integrated
approach to:
•Policy development
•Infrastructure development
•Human capacity development

19. Michael Porter, argues that:
•National welfare depends not on the comparative advantage of nations but on
their competitive advantage
•Scientific and technological infrastructure is one of the determinants of the
competitiveness of nations. This means, that one of the loci of innovation is the
nation (The Competitive Advantage of Nations)
Africa can not afford to miss the opportunity!