The Department of Science and Technology (DST) announced on Wednesday that it has authorised the transfer R798-million to the National Research Foundation (NRF) to fund human resource development. These funds will be disbursed during the three-year period from the 2012/13 financial year to the 2014/15 financial year.

During 2012/13, R87-million will be released to the NRF, followed by R310-million in 2013/14 and by R401-million in 2014/15. These disbursements fall within the ambit of, and have been approved in, the 2012/13 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.

In its press release, the DST affirmed that it “continues to invest heavily in human capital development to strengthen South Africa’s postgraduate training, research and innovation, and to improve the country’s global competitiveness”. The NRF will assign the funds to three programmes – new-generation researchers, emerging researchers and established researchers.

New-generation researchers will receive R450-million over the three years, of which R340-million will go to postgraduate bursaries and R110-million to the internship programme. The funding for postgraduate bursaries will allow an increase in both the size and number of bursaries awarded and so increase the retention of scarce postgraduate specialists in areas that are regarded as “critical” for the country. Some 10% of this funding will be employed in collaborative postgraduate programmes to train students in “priority areas”.

The internship programme has been run by the NRF for the DST since 2005/6 and is intended to promote employment for graduates. Each internship lasts 12 months and, to date, some 60% of interns have been given jobs by the companies hosting them. Hitherto, the programme has supported an average of 250 interns a year. The new funding allocation will allow this figure to be increased more than two-fold.

The emerging researchers programme will get R196-million, divided between research development grants, research career advancement fellowships and sabbatical grants. This programme is aimed at increasing the number and improving the “race, gender and age profiles of productive researchers”.

The research development grants will be once-off grants, aimed at qualifying researchers – young, black and/or women – to help them become established researchers. Research career advancement fellowships will go to senior postdoctorates, to prepare them as possible candidates for the South African Research Chairs Initiative. For reasons of transformation, the aim is to allocate 50% of the fellowships to women and 80% to black South Africans. Sabbatical grants will go to academic staff at universities to accelerate the completion of doctoral degrees.

Established researchers will benefit from R152-million. This money will be used to create six new centres of excellence and to properly fund two existing centres of excellence that previously had not been fully funded.