The Minister of Science & Technology of South Africa announced in her May 2011 Budget Speech the creation of a Research Chair in Research for Development jointly funded by the Ministry (DST) and COHRED. The COHRED/DST Research Chair in Research for Development is tenable at a South African University or other Research Institution.

The current process entails that universities apply to host this chair, which includes that they need to show it fits their research strategy, and what added value they will bring to this chair.

COHRED will participate in both the selection and the recruitment of a Chair. Overall, it is expected that the Chair will become active early in 2012.

If the Chair is positively evaluated after an initial period of 5 years, it is twice renewable for a total of 15 years. In the first year / years, we want to focus our funding on

i) increasing our understanding of the link between investments in research, science & technology and innovation on health, equity and development; and
ii) work on a metric to assess progress and impact.

The full listing of the 62 Research Chairs announced for this year is on this link. The MST/COHRED Chair is listed in the highlighted section 4.1.5.
If you are willing to support this COHRED Chair in providing funding, please contact us at cohred@cohred.org.