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Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators

Real R&D spending declines as business investment weakens

29 October 2026

Pretoria, Wednesday 28 October 2026 – South Africa’s gross domestic expenditure on research and development (R&D) increased to R44.237 billion in 2024/25, according to the latest National R&D Survey. However, real R&D expenditure declined by 1.9%, resulting in R&D intensity falling from 0.62% of GDP in 2023/24 to 0.60% in 2024/25. The findings suggest that,… View Article

Developmental, Capable and Ethical State

Media release – Local Elections @30: HSRC calls on all voters to participate in the Election Satisfaction Survey

26 October 2026

Pretoria, Monday, 26 October 2026 – The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) is calling on all…

CEO

HSRC Annual Conference 2026 honoured outstanding research papers and presentations

17 September 2026

Kempton Park, Thursday, 17 September 2026 – The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Annual…

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Fact Sheets

Factsheet 3 : Building up our national science system

02 June 2005

The national system of science and innovation is a key component of our country?s HRD machinery. Its primarily task is to continuously seek to improve production methods, outputs and employment levels in all sectors of the economy: from high…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 4 : Contours of private higher education and training

The size of the private higher education sector is smaller than originally anticipated, recent HSRC research reveals. Far from the original estimates in the 1990s, of some 150 000 enrolments, the head count enrolment of registered private…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 5 : Skills migration and the brain drain in South Africa

The loss of our highly skilled citizens to other countries through emigration has been a cause for concern in South Africa for many years. Contrary to popular perception, the brain drain in South Africa started long before the inception of the new…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 6 : Enterprise training in South Africa

The National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) of 2001 has great potential to reverse the low skills levels of the past few decades in South Africa. That is so because at the heart of the new institutional regime for skills formation lies better…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 7 : Intermediate skills in ICT as important as high-level skills

A major challenge for an analysis of the ICT workforce lies in the very volatile nature of ICT itself: as a group of technologies that are not stable and in a process of ongoing change. As the utility of ICT is discovered across different economic…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 8 : Is there a shortage of engineers in South Africa?

Engineers have played a crucial role in the industrial development of South Africa but it appears that their importance is declining, largely because of a declining employer demand for their skills. There is a shift in new recruitment towards…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 9 : Human resources development and the economy

South African economic policy in the past decade has successfully promoted export growth but has not brought about more pressing improvements in employment and overall economic growth. Indeed, a series of chapters in the HSRC?s HRD Review 2003 argue…

Fact Sheets

Factsheet 1 : Some key findings in “Flight of the Flamingos”

The school system does not produce enough students with the requisite passes in higher-grade mathematics and physical science to cope with the country’s human resources demands. So while progress has been made, the number of African school…

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