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Ben Ngubane, the newly installed science minister of South Africa,
has pledged to increase the country’s research spending. But pure science
will have to take a back seat, he says, while the country focuses on research
that brings in foreign cash or improves living standards.

Ngubane says spending on research and development in the republic is
too low. He points out that while Taiwan spends 1.7 per cent of GDP on R&D,
South Korea 1.8 per cent, Australia 1.3 per cent and Canada 1.4 per cent,
South Africa spends just 1 per cent of GDP on R&D. He wants this figure
increased immediately to 1.5 per cent.

He stresses that South Africa’s spending on R&D is still massive
when compared to the rest of Africa. Ngubane hopes that this edge will create
a thriving export industry for medical and other technological goods. He
believes there are opportunities in making vaccines, and in areas such
as veterinary services and rabies prevention.

Science and technology will be crucial to realising the government’s
new Reconstruction and Development Programme, which aims to bring improved
health services, housing, communications and electricity to millions of
black people (see ‘Majority rule for science’, New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, 26 March).
‘Technological excellence is a vital ingredient for high economic growth,’
says Ngubane. ‘To thrive economically we need to become competitive. To
be competitive we need to develop an environment that is supportive of
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R&D funding will depend on the extent to which research contributes
to the economy and to improved living standards. Projects that will bring
practical benefits to large numbers of people include surveying work being
carried out to avoid siting new towns on unsafe ground (some squatter camps
have subsided into massive sink holes), and research into air pollution,
drinking water and sewage treatment.

Ngubane, who is a medical doctor and was health minister of the Zulu
‘homeland’ Kwazulu before taking up his new post in May, also holds strong
views on medicine. ‘We still have a lot of kids suffering from malaria,
which causes many problems in later life,’ he says. ‘Malaria is a scourge
and we should be able to eliminate it rather than allow drug resistant strains
to take hold.’