Chapter 6: Targeted funding of research and training efforts

(Executive Summary)

The Study Panel believes that the overall levels of all official development assistance should be increased, and that the place of S&T capacity building should be secured among the priorities. Many existing programs for fellowships, training, and education can be expanded, as can programs of support for universities in developing nations. In addition, there are many innovative approaches being explored in the domain of international funding for development. Debt-swaps, involving either foreign loan principal or interest, already used in terms of debt for nature swaps, could also be explored for S&T capacity building, as could some of the debt relief programs for the heavily indebted poorest countries - helping them to address the special recommendations for these S&T-lagging countries. Out of many other possibilities, the Study Panel has selected the following suggestions for further elaboration.

National 'sectoral' funding programs provide support for research and development of national importance. One of the most imaginative ideas for national funding of research and development is the concept of 'sectoral' funds - a portion of a nation's tax levies on for-profit corporations redirected into a special fund for financing the conduct of research in selected S&T areas of economic interest to the nation. Sectoral funds, which can help implement a national strategic policy to promote high-quality research and development in a country's industries, require close interaction of the indigenous academic community, private sector, and government in creating the funds, setting their priorities, and managing them. Decisions on the selection of strategic sectors, their respective shares of the fund's resources, the blend of basic and applied research, the required overall budget, and sources of support are all jointly made.

The option of national sectoral funding for research and development should be seriously considered by the public, private, and academic sectors of developing nations that aspire to significant S&T capacity.
The management of each sectoral fund should be tripartite, with the participation of the academic community, government, and industry. A portion of each fund's resources should be used to support basic science, and another portion should support infrastructural needs.

Regional S&T networks should share responsibility for funding research. Beyond the S&T-advanced Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United States, and northern and western Europe, there are S&T-proficient countries among the many S&T-lagging ones in every region of the world. Regional networks, through which neighboring developing nations could together pursue world-class research and training activities on issues of mutual concern, should be created and supported in order to complement sectoral funds. The regional networks could in turn be involved in cooperative programs with S&T-advanced countries. These countries should be willing to fund these networks, along with the international-donor and financing community.

The S&T-proficient countries should cooperate with S&T-lagging countries in world-class research and education through regional networks.
Research nodes of the networks should be recognized centers of excellence in developing nations with a strong research base; this connection would help catalyze the strengthening of S&T capacities among their less-developed partners.
The networks should stimulate interdisciplinary research and establish links with the member countries' private sectors.

Global funding mechanisms should be strengthened for support of science and technology in developing nations. While the possibility exists for such funding through the targeted sectoral funds discussed above, it would require exceptionally committed governments. In some places, the total resources available may be insufficient for generating the needed foreign-currency resources. Therefore the Study Panel suggests that two global funds - an institutional fund and a program fund - be set up in a consultative process. Such global funds would not have to be pooled but could remain distinct, though coordinated centrally, so as to allow those donors with particular restrictions to honor them while still participatin in a coordinated funding plan.

A Global Institutional Fund should be established to provide 'soft funding' over a period of 5 to 10 years to some 20 centers of excellence of a national or regional character (operating by themselves or in developing-country networks). This funding would not be program-specific; it would be used instead to allow centers to promote the values of science and engineering and to create an atmosphere in which the practice of high-quality research can flourish. Specifically, the money would help each center to develop its programs, cultivate its management, and build its long-term funding base. Donors would meet in a con-sultative mode to review proposals resulting from an open call for competitive submissions, and they would select the centers according to clearly established evaluation criteria.
A Global Program Fund, creating new partnerships with advanced research institutes, should be estab-lished as a competitive grants system - for support of research groups in centers of excellence in developing nations - in which international referees would review the quality of the projects being proposed. Preference would be given to proposals that involve groups in several local and regional institutions. However, bilateral proposals - from one recipient center in cooperation with a research institute in an S&T-advanced or S&T-proficient country - would be perfectly acceptable, given the benefits of their one-on-one focus and the relative simplicity of their objectives (together with the greater likelihood of meeting them).