New push to increase funding for research and development

Kenya and African countries need to increase funding for science, technology, research and innovation to stop relying on donor support.

Instead, they should seek funds from within the country through blended finance. 

These were among the key issues raised during a panel discussion on the third day of the inaugural Science, Technology, Research, and Innovation for Society Week, which runs from May 18 to 22 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), Nairobi. 

It was themed: Rethinking Research and Innovation Funding in the Post-Aid Era.

Organised by the State Department of Science, Research and Innovation, the event brought together over 5,000 scientists, innovators, policymakers and students from across Kenya and the region. 

“So you probably have heard something about going to Singapore. It's become more like a cliche. I think it is the right one, because I spent eight years working in Southeast Asia and particularly on science and technology issues. And I can tell you that there are many lessons that we should try to draw from countries in Southeast Asia,” said Ellie Osir, senior programme specialist at International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. 

“Many of these countries have registered astronomical socioeconomic development through sustained and strategic investments in science, technology, and innovation. And you can see clearly that there are also those investments in countries like China, Japan, Asian tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and others like Malaysia and Thailand. So there's a lot that we can learn.” 

The calls came even as Kenya plans to increase its funding for research from the current around 0.8 per cent to one per cent of the Growth Domestic Product (GDP). 

The one per cent is still below the two per cent requirement by the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Act of 2013 to build a knowledge-based economy. 

Currently, South Africa is closest to one per cent, standing at 0.62 per cent. This is why, in terms of health research on the continent, it is the top funder through its National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF). 

Speaking to The Standard after the panel discussion, Principal Secretary in the State Department for Science, Research and Innovation Prof Shaukat Abdulrazak said the government is in the process of coming up with a science diplomacy policy. 

“This will help strengthen the linkage between science and academia, do commercialisation of research output and innovation to have a positive impact on society,” said Prof Shaukat. 

“President William Ruto is committed to ensuring funding reaches two per cent from the current 0.8 per cent to avoid reliance on external funding because almost 74 per cent of research comes from outside.

"The increase in funding will support improvement of the current status of the research infrastructure to have cutting-edge facilities that will come up with output that will have an impact on society.”

Dr Osir called for strengthening domestic resource mobilisation for science, technology and innovation. “We cannot continue as Africans to rely on external funding. So we need to increase expenditure on research and development, and one per cent of a small GDP is actually a small amount of money. So we need to increase this, maybe even to four per cent," he noted.

"And the African Union's Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa implementation plan, launched recently, urges member States to hit a research and development (R&D) investment target of one per cent, but I think that many countries have not hit one per cent.”

Osir also called for a need to introduce fiscal incentives for STI, such as R&D, tax credit, innovation voucher, tax incentives for venture capital and so on. 

“And the result is to try and reduce vulnerability to external funding shocks and to build long-term sustainability,” said Osir, who also called for the establishment of a dedicated Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. 

Kenya established the State Department of Science, Research and Innovation in March 2025 and is under Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi’s docket. 

On what Kenya needs to do differently in terms of incentives and value propositions needed to unlock greater private sector investment in science, research and innovation.

Dr Paul Orina, director general of Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, said there is a need for matching funds.

“The funding amount is shrinking very fast, and we need to look inwards. So the issue of matching funds is very critical, and probably all institutions, both academia and the research organisations, need to start thinking differently,” said Dr Orina.

“The other aspect that I probably want to look at is the challenge funds, which should also be available to our young scientists and also very seasoned scientists, who should be able to have cutting-edge research that brings societal, environmental and economic transformation.”

Dr Orina also said innovative grants, through working with the private sector to help them see what we are doing in research, so that they can also see how they can leverage the research.

On lessons from South Africa for Kenya, Dr Nana Boaduo, director of the Strategic Investments, Innovation and Impact at NRF, said the South African nation has a clearly defined national system of innovation within the country.

“South Africa's biggest strength is that it treats its innovation as an ecosystem rather than as a sector. So just to tie that into some of the policies is that since 1996, the white paper on innovation has been framed as a network of interacting actors, where governments, universities, industry and partners play a large role in making sure that we drive the science and innovation in the country,” said Dr Boaduo.

“But at the same time, the policies, institutions and the funding streams are also deliberately aligned, meaning that they don't operate independently, but rather coherently as well.”

This is unlike in Kenya, where there is fragmentation, according to Dr Wilson Owino, a research manager at the International Centre for Humanitarian Affairs, who said there is a need to set up a national humanitarian innovation framework.

Dr Owino said one thing that Kenya is not doing right is treating science, research and innovation as scholarly activities. “At the moment, we have close to three major gaps.

The first gap is about having a weak alignment between research and the real research and programming,” said Dr Owino.

“The reality is that, as a private sector actor, most of them, based on experience, actually do not see the relevance between, or related to the business case, aside from that, scalability, or from that, looking into the operational relevance of research investments. And this is because we've always communicated research academically, rather than economically and socially.”