JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) --Although Sasol gave the universities their first R25 million tranche of the money in 2006, and had already handed over R75 million, the petrochemical giant had waited until now to announce the project publicly so it would be able to unveil it from a point of having already made a difference, Louw said.
"It was done three years ago, but it is good to announce something after you have worked at it and made it a success. Then you can tell others it didn't fizzle out," Louw said. Sasol had given 35% of the company's corporate social investment (CSI) budget a year to education, and the R250 million was a substantial part of this, Louw said.
The company's 2007-08 CSI budget was in the region of R78.9 million, excluding a R54.6 million bursary fund, said Sasol CSI and HIV/AIDS programme manager Pam Mudhray.
Its investment ranges from delivering basic infrastructure to primary schools to purchasing state of the art equipment for university laboratories and guaranteeing financial support for academics' salaries in order to keep them teaching.
Louw said the university partnership programme had helped institutions retain between 20 and 50 academics who had been considering returning to the private sector or moving abroad. Almost half of the money had been used to retain academics, bring international experts to South Africa (SA) and rotate Sasol research and development staff to universities, and young academics to Sasol and abroad, said Eloff.
A third each had been spent on infrastructure and equipment, which was already expensive before the rand-dollar exchange rate shifted drastically in recent weeks, and on special projects aimed at keeping SA's higher education institutions at the forefront of research.
Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena said the development of an effective innovation system for SA was a "mammoth" task that could not be left to the government and higher education institutions, and urged other businesses to put funds into the long-term growth of research and development capacity.
Mangena, in a message recorded specifically for the event, repeated the concern he highlighted in his budget speech earlier this year, that few of SA's business leaders appeared to be aware of the government's new tax incentives for research and development.
SA was still missing its target of spending 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development. The country was set to spend 0.9% of GDP on research and development by the end of this year, Mangena said.
The Sasol cash injection - the company gave the nine universities and one university of technology it is funding another R25 m illion yesterday - was a good example of how to put the theory of public-private partnerships into practice, said Higher Education SA chairman Prof Theuns Eloff.
The partnership was Sasol's way of ensuring its place in the forefront of the global scientific research and development arena in the face of stringent global competition, said Louw.
