By Roy Hezron
Data from the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI) as captured by the recently released Economic Survey 2021 report revealed that the number of researchers in the country who researched on Covid-19 since its outbreak in mid-March last year significantly increased.
The number of research licenses granted to researchers under health and biological sciences increased from 621 in 2018/19 to 1,372 in 2019/20.
“The increase in the number of research licenses granted in this field of study is attributed to a rise in the number of researchers undertaking research on Covid-19 and related studies,” reads the report in part.
The data further reveals that researchers whose studies were under agriculture and natural resources sciences went up significantly from 143 in 2018/19 to 303 in 2019/20.
The number of research licenses granted under humanities and social sciences went down by 8.6 per cent to 3,985 in 2019/20 and accounted for 65.2 per cent of all individual research licenses granted. Health and biological Sciences accounted for 22.4 per cent.
The number of research license applications reduced by 8.2 per cent to 6,077 in 2019/20 from 6,623 in 2018/19. The drop is partly attributed to the closure of various learning institutions and Covid-19 pandemic constraints.
The report revealed that the number of research license applicants from Non-African nations recorded a significant decline of 49.2 per cent to 240 in 2019/20. The reduction was attributed to international travel restrictions which were instituted by the government to contain the spread of Covid-19.
The data also shows that the number of research licenses granted increased by 7.7 per cent from 6,015 in 2018/19 to 6,481 in 2019/20. This was as a result of the number of research licences granted to Kenyan and East African Community (EAC) citizens and the processing of pending research license applications from previous years.
The total number of individual research licenses granted increased by 6.9 per cent from 5,719 in 2018/19 to 6,112 in 2019/20.
During the review period, research licenses granted to researchers from Kenya/EAC who were pursuing undergraduate or diploma programmes recorded a significant increase from 188 in 2018/19 to 787 in 2019/20, while those who were pursuing doctorate programmes reduced by 8.2 per cent to 928 in 2019/20.
Most recently, NACOSTI came up with new proposed guidelines. If endorsed by all stakeholders, the guidelines will lead to the establishment of a new database for researchers.
The guidelines will also enable the commission to know the total number of researchers in the country and their fields of specialization through the database.
