cape town

Britain's science minister, Lord Sainsbury, announced during a visit to South Africa last week that the UK government will contribute a further £100,000 (US$165,000) to a bilateral research fund, extending its activities for a further year.

The UK/South Africa Science and Technology Joint Research Fund, to which the South African government makes an equal contribution, was set up in 1996 to support projects in agriculture, biotechnology and biomedical and environmental science.

At a review of the fund's first three years of operation, held in Cape Town, Sainsbury applauded its success, saying that it has “reaped considerable benefits for science in both South Africa and the UK”.

Sainsbury announced that a memorandum of understanding will be signed between the United Kingdom's Royal Society and South Africa's new National Research Foundation (NRF; see above) to build research capacity at historically black institutions.

Since September 1996, the Royal Society has provided £250,000 a year to establish centres of excellence at historically black universities — in biotechnology and marine biology at the University of the Western Cape, chemistry at the University of Zululand, stock science at the University of Fort Hare and computational modelling for materials science at the University of the North.

A collaborative scheme between the NRF and the Royal Society provides funds for exchange visits between these universities and counterpart institutions in the United Kingdom, and for replacement salaries for South African staff members upgrading their qualifications in the United Kingdom.

The historically black universities have seen drastic reductions in enrolment over the past five years (see Nature 398, 277; 1999 ). But Prins Nevhutalu, who coordinates the scheme at the NRF, feels this should not have a negative effect on attracting postgraduate students to a research centre of excellence.