A four-year-old promise to create a $5 billion publically funded competitive granting agency in Nigeria -- which would be the second such agency in Africa -- was revived last month, but leading African scientists remain skeptical that the plan will ever get off the ground.

Image: MikeBlyth, Wikimedia Commons

"We were really hopeful in the beginning," said Mohamed Hassan, chairman of Nigeria's Presidential Advisory Committee for Science and Technology and the executive director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. "But the proposal hasn't translated into real action. There's been no progress setting the money aside or specifics on how the foundation would operate."

Talk of establishing a Nigerian National Science Foundation (NSF) began in the early 2000s, when the newly-created presidential committee on science and technology argued that a boost in science and technology funding and a competitive-based granting system could help accelerate the country's economic development and stability. UNESCO jumped on board soon after, helping the government write a draft bill for such an agency's creation. In May 2006, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in cooperation with UNESCO, announced Nigeria would set aside an approximately $5 billion endowment for the NSF and asked foreign governments and donor organizations for additional funds.

The idea was to base the agency on the US National Science Foundation, using peer reviewed grants to spur competition and increase research quality. Interest from the $5 billion endowment would provide an annual budget of $250 million. The UNESCO-written bill, if passed by the Nigerian National Assembly, the country's legislative body, would have created the second publically funded competitive grant system in Africa (South Africa being the first). But until just a few weeks ago, the country's NSF plan remained stagnant.

On October 8, current President Umaru Yar'Adua announced he would revitalize the project. "Nations become great when they excel in the field of science, engineering and technology in both its teaching and application," Yar'Adua said at the State House in Abuja, according to the Nigerian newspaper The Daily Independent.

But Yar'Ardua's pledge came without much of a definitive strategy, and there's no telling whether the money will ever materialize. Nigeria's minister of science and technology, Al-Hassan Zaku, refused to comment on the plan, only saying he knew nothing more about it; UNESCO officials in Nigeria contacted by The Scientist also had no further information, despite UNESCO being a key contributor to the country's early NSF plans.

"Getting $5 million from Nigeria [for the African Academy of Sciences] was difficult, let alone $5 billion," said Hassan, referring to the country's recent involvement with a continent-wide campaign to increase financial support of scientific research. And getting a bill detailing the agency's funding and organization through the National Assembly is "never an easy task," he added. The president of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences, Oye Ibidapo-Obe, was more optimistic. "The Academy is putting considerable energy on this NSF matter," he said. "We hope for its early realization."


Related stories:

Chile fires science council chief
[23rd October 2009]

Scientists lead Nigeria
[4th June 2007]

The long journey home
[1st June 2006]