Middle-income status blocks funding taps in Botswana
When Maitseo Bolaane, director of the University of Botswana’s San Research Centre, applied for the third renewal of her funding from the Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education in 2010, she got a shock. Because the World Bank had upgraded her country to middle-income status, she was no longer eligible for the grant.
This was a problem for the centre, which had received money since 2005 from the Norwegian funder to do research on marginalised communities and give scholarships to the San community.
She sent begging letters to the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Ford Foundation, but found no traction. Even appeals to companies with local interests, such as diamond mining companies De Beers, Debswana and Gem Diamonds, fell on deaf ears. She had to scale down her centre’s research and training activities.
Competition for funding
It may sound strange that scientists are crying out for funding in one of Africa’s wealthiest countries. But in a way Botswana’s diamond riches have turned into a curse. Countries’ income status is based on their per capita gross national income (GNI). Botswana’s booming diamond revenue pushed the country into the upper middle-income bracket, leading to its reclassification by the World Bank in 2007.
Such upgrades can present serious development challenges, says Constantine Chikosi, the former World Bank manager for Botswana who is now based in Thailand. Botswana’s upgrade is at odds with the skills level of its population, the quality of education and the availability of infrastructure and services.
Julius Atlhopheng, head of environmental science at the University of Botswana, says getting funding has become tougher since the status upgrade. Competition for funding, both local and foreign, has reached fever pitch. “The response from international funders now is ‘Tell your government to fund you: they can afford it’,” he says
One way of making ends meet is by targeting funding opportunities that allow the country to partner with a neighbouring low-income country, Atlhopheng says. The Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) project is one such programme, from which the University of Botswana, jointly with researchers in Malawi, managed to win funding.
Martin Kebakile, chief research scientist at the National Food Technology Research Centre (NFTRC), shares a similar story. Young scientists at NFTRC struggle to apply for many masters degree programmes and scholarships in Europe, as the country no longer qualifies for several schemes. In addition, the institution, set up in the 1980s by HIVOS, a Dutch foundation, no longer qualifies for many Dutch funding opportunities.
Brave new world
Of course, there are many funding opportunities for which the country’s researchers remain eligible. But the competition for these is harder, and the programmes don’t always address the development problems that Botswana—for all its diamond riches—still faces.
The brave new world of competing on an equal basis with researchers from countries such as China, Brazil and even from Europe and North America is daunting. The NFTRC has not applied for many competitive funding opportunities, says Kebakile. It applied to the Wellcome Trust, but was unsuccessful.
The impact of research results has suffered from the scaling-down of the country’s research effort, he adds. “It has completely limited our way of doing things. There is no continuity and proper focus that would help us produce enough scientific knowledge with big impact.”
The upgrade also strangled Batswana researchers’ access to scientific journals. Countries with low-income status often qualify for free or discounted access. Now Botswana scientists have to pay. For instance, HINARI, a programme set up by the World Health Organization to give developing country scientists access to major collections of biomedical and health articles, excludes Botswana.
Government inaction
The situation has not gone unnoticed by the Botswana government—but it has yet to put any of its plans in action to help the plight of the country’s researchers, though the upgrade occurred six years ago.
The government doesn’t have a good overview of the problem, says Lesego Motoma, director of the government’s Department of Research, Science and Technology. “There hasn’t been a study to ascertain how Batswana researchers have been affected by the classification of Botswana as a middle-income country,” she says.
The Botswana National Research and Technology Plan published in 2005 said the country spent an estimated 0.43 per cent of its GDP on R&D, and that it intended to increase this to 1 per cent by 2016. However, plans for a National Research Fund to create a sustainable funding pot for the country’s researchers have yet to become a reality.
Kebakile is not impressed with the government’s management of the upgrade and its impact on researchers. When donor cuts threatened his work, he approached the government for extra funding, but it would not fill the gap. “We had worked on products and prototypes, but have no funding to continue the projects,” he says.
The spending lull is also harming the country’s pipeline of researchers. The number of students coming to do NFTRC’s masters programme has fallen.
According to Kebakile, the blame sits squarely with Botswana government priorities. As elsewhere in Africa, priorities like basic education and healthcare take precedence over research, science and technology. “Botswana has a very small budget to fund science and technology,” he says.