Minister Naledi Pandor says more should be spent on research. Photo: World Economic Forum via Flickr

Not enough money is being spent on research and development in South Africa.

This is what Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor said when she presented the department’s National Survey of Research and Experimental Development report for 2008/2009 yesterday.

BuaNews reports that even though R2.4 billion more was spent on research and development than last year, the government’s target of spending 1% of GDP on this field has not been met.

This year R21 billion has been spent on research and development. According to Pandor, President Jacob Zuma wants spending on this field to increase to 1.5% of GDP by 2014.

Spending on research is also divided between many different sectors. The division is as follows:

• Engineering Sciences = 24.4% of total research spending
• Natural Sciences = 20,6%
• Medical and Health Sciences = 14.6%
• Information and Communication Technologies = 13.1%
• Applied Sciences and Technology = 9.1%
• Agricultural Sciences = 5.5%
• Social Sciences and Humanities = 12.5%

It is estimated that there are 1.4 researchers for every 1000 employees in South Africa, which comes to about 19 384 researchers. There used to be 1.5 researchers for every 1000, so this trend is quite worrying to Pandor. In Argentina the rate is 2.9, in China 1.9 and in Russia 6.4.

To increase this number, Naledi said that there would have to be a focus on producing more post-graduate research students.

These sentiments were echoed yesterday by Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande when, according to The Times he said at the National Skills Summit that there is a need for: “high level skills in engineering, animal and health sciences, physical and life sciences and teaching; and research, development and innovation in human capital”.

With eight years of experience in social science research, Creative Consulting & Development Works is conscious of the importance of research in the South African context, to determine needs for development and to evaluate the impact of current social development projects. It is definitely a field that deserves attention, especially in developing countries.

South African soccer fans. Photo: Media Club South Africa

If you want to know straight from the fans how they are feeling about the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Winkball.com is an interesting site to look at. You can even record your own match report and stand a chance to win £1000.00.

Winkball is a user-friendly website that enables communication through video. All you need is a computer with internet and a webcam. The ball-shape of a webcamera that you can attach to your computer was probably part of the idea behind the website’s name, while “wink” refers to the personal nature of video communication, where you can see a person’s facial expressions, winks and smiles.

You Tube is all about uploading and watching videos and Skype enables live chatting via a webcam. While Winkball also has live chatting capabilities, one can pre-record a video message and then send it out to friends and family, almost like an email. Alternatively you can post it as an entry on your video blog. You can also create a video wall on a certain topic and people can upload videos of their opinion on the subject.

Most recently, UK-based Winkball has sent out reporters to South Africa to record the opinions of soccer fans on the ground. You might see a Winkball journalist walking around with a little recording devise and they might ask you who you are supporting, etc. These comments get posted onto the Winkball website, so that they can “communicate happiness”. They have already spoken to thousands of die-hard fans.

Here are some comments from fans found on the streets of Johannesburg about the match that was played between Brazil and Chile last night.

You can also make a video of yourself giving a match report of one of the games and become a “star reporter”.  Winkball is giving away £1000.00 for the best match report every week.

Creative Consulting & Development Works is also very aware of the impact of videos, that is why we have been sharing videos with you in our blog posts since the start of the World Cup. If you missed any, click here, scroll down and enjoy.

Ordinary South Africans can be trained to collect research data using cellpones. Photo by: Kiwanja.net

A new study has identified how more ordinary people from rural and peri-urban areas can become involved in research, simply by using their mobile phones.

Currently there are a couple of organisations in South Africa that train people at grassroots level to collect data for research projects. This is an excellent way to uplift these people and create job opportunities.

All over Africa, health research done with the help of mobile phones is increasing. Creative Consulting & Development Works recently wrote a newsletter article about this phenomenon, referred to as mhealth. To read the article, click here.

The most recent study on mhealth in South Africa (published December 2009) entitled The use of mobile phones as a data collection tool: A report from a household survey in South Africa, set out to “investigate the extent to which community health workers with little experience of data collection could be trained and successfully supervised to collect data using mobile phones in a large baseline survey”.

Local women from Umlazi, close to Durban, hired as community health workers, were contracted by the researchers to collect data. None of the 24 women had any previous experience of data collection, but all had mobile phones and could SMS. They received 2 days of training using the software installed on their phones.

Researchers can check the quality of data collected more easily using mobile phones. Photo by: Rachel Strohm

Over the course of four months, 39,665 households were surveyed by these women. There were no hardware or software failures using the mobile phones.

The researchers found that the benefits of using mobile phones for data collection are as follows:

• Quality checks could be performed in real-time, and inconsistencies could be detected and rectified in a timely manner.
• The automated graphs and reports allowed the project manager to see how many surveys were completed on an hourly or daily basis.
• Data falsification could also be detected. If an unrealistic number of surveys were completed in a specific time, the project manager would be alerted that something is not right.

And of course, the income it generates for unskilled workers used to collect this data, is very valuable.

The researchers came to the conclusion that this is a “feasible method of data collection that needs to be further explored”.

Read more about the study here.

NGOs, CBOs, small business owners and even government are increasingly making use of Free Libre and Open Source Software.

If you still think that FLOSS is just something you do after you have brushed your teeth, you have not yet joined the ranks of those realising the benefits and potencial of  Free Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Free means the software gives you freedom, but it is not necessarily always cost free. With FLOSS you can view the source code of a program and if you have the technical know-how, you can alter that code to enhance the program. With proprietary software the code is hidden. You are also allowed to copy and share Free and Open Source Software and do not need a registration code, as is the case with proprietary software.    

The Free Software Movement, consisting of people who believed that if you love software you should set it free, started in the early 1980’s.  It culminated in the Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman. They are dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs.  

Groups working on a tight budget such as non-governmental organisations, community based organisations and small businesses are increasingly making use of this type of software. Even government has realised the potencial of FLOSS, announcing in 2007 that they would migrate to Free and Open Source Software. However, they have not fully implemented the use of FLOSS yet.  

Free and Open Source Software can also be used for education in resource-poor schools and by entrepreneurs trying to make a living.  

Members of the Development Works team attended Joomla training conducted by the organisation FLOSSnet last week. Joomla is Free and Open Source Software used to design and manage websites.

The idea to host TEDAfrica came about as a result of the success of the TEDGlobal conference that was held in Tanzania last year, due to the evident need for a platform that focused specifically on the unique and pertinent challenges that Africa faces. Therefore TEDAfrica will be held for the first time here in Cape Town, South Africa, from the 29^th of September to the 1st of October 2008.

If the Africa conference is anything like its sister conference which had over 50 speakers and 1000 delegates in just 4 days, then this is an event that every great mind in Africa should be attending. Such a conference recognises that Africa has its own unique challenges that are not shared by our western counterparts and that meaningful interventions and solutions should come from within the continent itself. It therefore encourages us to take charge of our situation and take responsibility for its change and our future.

It also provides a huge opportunity for networking and it is an open space for Africans to stretch their minds, challenge the present as well as birth new and innovative ways of tackling our current challenges and even go further by suggesting strategies that will prevent future problems. It is also a good platform to recognise and celebrate the great minds Africa has, as well as our achievements thus far. Such a platform also shatters political boundaries and allows Africans a collective view of our situation and yet at the same time maintaining their own specific identity.

I hope that Africa will grab this opportunity and gain as much from it as it can offer.

Patience Mungwari (Development Works)