South African Research Chairs

The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) establishes prestigious research chairs in South African universities with the support of funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF). The programme, launched in 2006 as a joint initiative between the NRF and the national Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), aims to attract and retain excellent researchers in South African public institutions. The research chairs are reserved for established researchers and are renewable for up to 15 years.

History and management
DSI (then called the Department of Science and Technology) established the South African Research Chairs Initiative in 2006 as a means of attracting and retaining "excellence in research and innovation at South African public universities". In particular, the government was concerned to deter brain drain while attracting expatriate, foreign, and private-sector researchers.

The initiative is implemented by the NRF, and a small number of chairs are co-funded with donations from interested businesses. Research chairs funded under the initiative are hosted by a South African university and are supported by sizeable NRF research grants, which cover salaries, postdoctoral fellowships, research equipment and operating costs, and other overhead for the research programme established under the chair. Each chair is established at one of two tiers according to the candidate's track record in research and student supervision: Tier I chairs are reserved for internationally recognised researchers, who are eligible to spend up to 50 per cent of their time outside South Africa, while Tier II chairs are full-time. Chairs can be renewed every five years for up to 15 years.

Supporters of the initiative argue that it ameliorates brain drain, boosts research output and capacity for postgraduate supervision, supports affirmative action efforts in respect of gender and race, and results in broader economic benefits by boosting research and development capacity.

Distribution of chairs
Applications for new research chairs are solicited and approved at the discretion of DSI and the NRF. Upon its launch in 2006, the initiative established 21 chairs and set a target of supporting 210 chairs by 2010, representing an investment of close to R10-billion over 15 years. By mid-2011, only 92 research chairs had been established, though they accounted for an outsized proportion of the country's total research output – comprising 1.5 per cent of all active researchers in South Africa, they produced 4.5 per cent of national research outputs.

By 2015, the number of research chairs had grown to 150. Later that year, noting that men accounted for 80 per cent of SARChI recipients, Naledi Pandor (then the Minister of Science and Technology) announced an unprecedented call for applications that was open only to women researchers; 42 women were approved for new research chairs, bringing the total stock of research chairs to 201 and close to gender parity.

Especially in the early years of the initiative, there was debate in the academic community about the equity of the distribution of the research chairs across disciplines and institutions. Early grants were concentrated at South Africa's top-ranked research universities, such as the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand; however, by 2012, 21 of the country's 23 universities hosted at least one chair, and the representation of former technikons had improved vastly. Similarly, the initiative was initially criticised for its narrow focus on research topics in science, which were more closely aligned to the government's strategic priorities, but greater provision was later made for humanities and social science researchers to obtain research chairs in an "open" category.