MeerKAT triumph highlights importance of proper, consistent, funding for research

The official inauguration of the 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope array in the middle of this month was a wonderful landmark in the history of both science and technology in South Africa. It marked the culmination of years of hard work and innovation by South African scientists and engineers and, it must never be forgotten, significant investment by South African taxpayers! The inauguration brought the country great and good publicity around the world.

It is a story I have followed and reported on since the beginning, going all the way back to the seven-dish KAT-7 engineering and technology test array, and its technology demonstrator dish, then known as the XDM. While KAT-7, like the MeerKAT, was built in the Karoo, west of Carnarvon, in the Western Cape, the XDM (short for eXperimental Development Model) was erected at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), west of Pretoria. Although intended as an experiment, it is today an operational dish at HartRAO, now called the 15 m telescope. KAT-7 also served as an operational array.

So, it is ironic that I was not available to cover the official inauguration of the completed array. Still, that was most ably reported on by my colleague Simone Liedtke, accompanied by another colleague, photojournalist Dylan Slater. It did mean I avoided the freezing cold nights experienced in Carnarvon at this time of year!

Of course, the MeerKAT is not the end of the story – far from it. As well as being a great instrument in its own right (and it certainly is great), it is also a precursor to the greatest radio astronomy instrument that has yet been conceived: the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA). This will have two cores, in South Africa and Australia, complemented, in its second phase, by outstations in other countries.

As I am writing in Engineering News, need not repeat the arguments in favour of South Africa spending money on the MeerKAT and SKA. It is obvious to all our readers that the country cannot develop without high technology and advanced sciences sectors. What can be pointed out is that the preparations for the setting up of SKA Phase 2 outstations in a number of African countries are stimulating scientific, technological and engineering development in those countries. And that, in South Africa, a key effect of the MeerKAT and SKA programmes is the development of Big Data processing and software development capabilities.

Of course, none of this would have happened if the programme had not been properly funded. Alas, in this regard, the MeerKAT programme has been rather atypical of science and technology programmes in South Africa. Thus, for example, the country’s next earth observation satellite programme, EO-Sat1, remains inadequately funded – in a sector in which technology is advancing very rapidly. I suspect that, because the MeerKAT was feeding into the SKA, and because the SKA is such a huge and high-profile international programme, any shortfall in funding would have been, and would still be, a national embarrassment and a personal humiliation for South Africa’s political leaders. Funding shortfalls on national programmes do not make Presidents look bad when visiting other countries. Yet these national programmes promise to bring the same kind of benefits to the country, albeit on different scales, that the MeerKAT programme is doing.

Research and development (R&D) is fundamental to sustainable economic growth and development. Even countries with small populations and small economies benefit from focused local applied R&D in their key economic sectors, such as tourism, agriculture, fisheries and mining.

While South Africa is far from the worst in terms of the level of its national (not just governmental) spending on R&D, it is also far behind the high-flyers. In the 2014/15 financial year, total South African R&D spending amounted to 0.77% of gross domestic product (GDP) and, in April last year, government announced an ambition to increase this by 100%, to 1.5% of GDP by 2020. In comparison, total Chinese R&D expenditure came to 2.1% of GDP last year, total Taiwanese R&D spending was 3.1% in 2015, South Korea’s R&D expenditure in that same year was 4.23% of GDP, and Israel’s was 4.25% (also in 2015).

It is true that South Africa’s private sector has a dreadful record when it comes to funding R&D. But it is also true that government sets a bad example, with funding for the Department of Science and Technology, once inflation is taken into account, now being effectively static. Both the public and private sectors really need to give higher priorities to R&D – and government must check if legislative and/or regulatory frameworks are hampering R&D by both the private sector and by State-owned companies. Certainly, for example, the unmanned aerial vehicle sector is being hampered by onerous and unrealistic regulations.