The Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development reveals that the gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) has risen in real terms for the first time in four years. In 2021/22, GERD as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of research and development (R&D) intensity, reached 0.62%, a slight increase from the previous year's 0.60%. This growth, in 2015 prices, amounted to a 6.9% year-on-year increase in 2021/22, from R25.965-billion in 2020/21 to R27.756-billion in 2021/22.

“Nations that invest in R&D at a high enough intensity tend to lead in global competitiveness,” says Dr Nazeem Mustapha, HSRC chief research specialist and the R&D Survey’s principal investigator. “South Africa is striving to reach higher levels of R&D intensity by increasing expenditure on R&D, which in turn can lead to new industries and boosting of existing ones, job creation, increased productivity, and sustained economic growth.”

GERD encompasses all spending on R&D on national territory in a given year. It includes domestically performed R&D, which is funded from abroad, but excludes R&D funds paid abroad, such as to international agencies.

Key indicators highlight positive economic growth in South Africa for the period under review. According to Statistics South Africa (2023), South Africa's GDP rebounded, rising by 4.7% in 2021/22 after a 6.0% decline during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/21.

“The growth in R&D expenditure is reassuring, although this comes off a very low base. The previous year’s decline in growth represented the biggest fall in R&D expenditure in the twenty years that the HSRC has been conducting the survey. We expect the next survey’s result to provide us with a better sense of what the trend is,” says Mustapha.

Report by the Human Sciences Research Council