African Research Funders Lean into the Global Research Council for Shared Experiences

This week, the 13^th Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC) is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The meeting is hosted by the Research, Development, and Innovation Authority (RDIA) in partnership with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) from Saudi Arabia and co-hosted by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBITAK).

This year, sub-Saharan Africa has been represented by council representatives from South Africa, Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique, indicating the growing connectedness of African research councils globally.

The GRC, established in 2012, is a virtual organisation comprised of the heads of science and engineering public funding agencies from around the world, dedicated to the promotion of sharing data and best practices for high-level collaboration among global funding agencies. The GRC has organised itself into five regions globally—sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East/North Africa—and ensures that all of its structures and activities involve and are representative of the regions.

The GRC hosts annual meetings attended by Heads of Research Councils (HORCs) from around the world, as well as high-ranking observers from global science agencies, university associations, and research policy organisations. Each annual meeting is informed by themes carefully selected to advance the GRC mandate. To facilitate and coordinate deliberations during the annual meetings, the GRC develops discussion papers on the relevant theme(s) to guide the production of statements of principles. Regional consultation meetings are held annually in the five GRC regions to advance the discussion papers.

As a collective, the GRC participating organisations also produce good practice documents (often aligned to the annual themes) where trends, practices and experiences of public science funders are shared. In addition, there are GRC working groups that collectively champion, implement, and advance statements of principles and other topics of importance for the GRC.

The discussion papers and statement of principles on the various thematic areas produced by the working groups align with many of the themes that councils partner on, in the context of the Science Granting Councils Initiative in sub-Saharan Africa (SGCI). For example, should an SGC wish to promote the status and equality of women in research within their science system, it can refer to the set of 10 principles produced on that topic as a guideline for the appropriate, tried and tested steps to be taken in that regard.

The NRF was one of the founding members of the GRC in 2012. It has thus had a long-standing relationship with the body and has benefited in a variety of ways from this relationship. The GRC has provided abundant opportunities for peer-learning amongst public funders; the development of new partnerships with other public funding agencies; and deepening existing relationships. All these relationships seek to enhance collaborative work to devise new research programmes and deepen existing ones.

For the first few years, the NRF was the only science granting council in sub-Saharan Africa that was actively engaged in GRC structures and activities. The establishment of the SGCI in 2015 provided a platform through which greater involvement by and benefits for the other research councils in sub-Saharan Africa could be grown in the GRC.

A first low hanging fruit was to connect the GRC sub-Saharan Africa regional consultative meetings such that they are hosted jointly with the SGCI Annual Forum, a decision that encouraged complementarity and socialised the GRC in SSA. The cohort of SGCI participating councils are considered participant organisations of the GRC and constitute the forum that deliberates on the GRC annual themes to ensure that the voice of science granting councils in sub-Saharan Africa is considered. In addition, other non-SGCI participant organisations in the region, including Angola, Guinea, Togo, and the Seychelles, have been invited to join the annual meetings on the continent.

Secondly, councils in the Africa region have increasingly engaged in the GRC governance and working structures. For example, Dr Yaya Sangare, Director General, Fonds pour la Science, la Technologie et l’Innovation (FONSTI) in Cote d’Ivoire, became the second head of a research council in the sub-Saharan Africa region to join the Governing Board of the GRC where he has served alongside Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo, CEO of the NRF. At this year’s GRC Annual Meeting, Dr Amos Nungu, Director General of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), was elected to the GRC Governing Board. The NRF and COSTECH also serve on the Executive Support Group (ESG) of the GRC.

Finally, councils in the region have benefitted from the networking, partnership-building, and shared learning opportunities that the GRC provides through its working groups. In their engagements, councils in the region have been able to share their experiences on the implementation of the SGCI with the global network of science funders and raise the profiles and visibility of science funders in sub-Saharan Africa in this global arena.

For councils on the continent, engaging in the GRC has been catalytic to network with councils outside of the continent, to actively contribute to global public funder discussions, and to expand the scope of existing and potential opportunities that enhance funding sustainability on the continent into the future.

Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo, CEO, NRF has led the NRF delegation to the GRC Annual Meeting. The NRF serves on all of the governance and working structures of this prominent public funder institutional network.