RWANDA NATIONAL RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT (R&D) SURVEY FOR 2018/2019
The National Research and Experimental Development (R&D) is an important tool for monitoring the performance of the National System of Innovation. R&D is one of the key enablers and core pillars of the transformation of Rwanda into a knowledge-based and service-oriented economy needed to achieve the Vision 2050. In this regard, Rwanda is engaged in various strategic initiatives to strengthen her R&D Ecosystem, through for example the network of centers of excellence, R&D institutes and tech business centers. Furthermore, in June 2020, the parliament approved the national Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Policy that stipulates strategic objectives and policy actions that guide the interventions in science, technology, research and innovation towards becoming a knowledge-based economy.
In order to strategically leverage the existing efforts and increase the efficiency and socioeconomic impact of previous, current and future R&D-related investments, there is a need for periodic collection of R&D statistics to support informed decision-making in both the public and private sectors. It is within this background that, The National Council for Science and Technology (NCST), as a public advisory national institution, with a mandate of providing informed and strategic policy recommendations and advice to the Government of Rwanda on issues pertaining to the development of Science, Technology, Research and Innovation (STRI); periodically collects and analyzes the R&D data. The findings facilitate the measurement and provision of policy advice to the Government on STRI policy implementation, policy targets and priorities.
In order to gauge the state, performance and impact of the various R&D investments, NCST conducted the Rwanda National Research and Experimental Development (R&D) Survey for the reference year 2018/2019, considering the previous survey of 2015/2016 as the baseline. The survey covers the four R&D-performing sectors in Rwanda, namely, the government, higher education, business enterprise and private non-profit sectors. This approach is followed in order to maintain consistency with the categorization of institutional sectors recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the Frascati Manual (OECD, 2015), which proposes standard practice for surveys on Research and Experimental Development.
The current analysis report presents aggregate statistics on key indicators for R&D performance such as expenditure, funding, human resources and output, which can be used to assess national progress and for international comparison. The survey established that the overall Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) increased from 0.66% of GDP in 2015/2016 to 0.69% of GDP in 2018/2019. This shows a good progress made but more efforts are still required to meet the national target of 1% of GDP recommended by the African Union. The GERD encompasses both intramural and extramural expenditures and is further presented by source and sector of performance: the Government Expenditure on R&D National Council for Science and Technology | ii Analysis Report, National R&D Survey 2018/2019 (GOVERD), the Higher Education Expenditure on R&D (HERD), the Business Expenditure on R&D (BERD), and the Private-Non-Profit Expenditure on R&D (PNPERD).