S. Africa approves $89m for human resource development

JOHANNEBSURG - The South African government on Wednesday approved a multi-million dollars plan to boost the human resource development and global competitiveness.

South African Department of Science and Technology agreed to allocate 798 million rands ($89 million) to assist the National Research Foundation (NRF) for human resource development, including the research in various fields in the next three years.

The joint statement issued by the Department of Science and Technology and the NRF said, "Department of Science and Technology continues to invest heavily in human capital development to strengthen South Africa's postgraduate training, research and innovation for improving the country's global competitiveness."

"The department has identified new-generation researchers, emerging researchers and established researchers as components of the human capital pipeline," said the statement.

This money will assist post graduates with bursaries to further their studies and country's other programs which have shortage of rare skills.

The department said it will appropriate the additional 87 million rands, 310 million rands and 401 million rands in the fiscal years of 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively in the relevant important programs.

"The allocation will enhance funding for postgraduate students by improving the per capita bursary values and increasing the number of funded students, thus boosting the postgraduate pipeline retention in scarce and critical knowledge areas," said the statement.

The fund is also trying to address the gender and racial parity, according to the statement."About 80 percent of the beneficiaries should be black, while 50 percent must be women," said the department.