Research projects are left in limbo as donors halt funding to the
Major African research projects have been disrupted as international donors have withdrawn funding from the continent's science academy due to a long-running governance crisis, a SciDev.Net investigation has found.
Science and research programmes have been moved from the
However, millions of dollars in funding have been put on hold, affecting research across the continent, according to insiders familiar with the governance crisis.
Researchers say vital projects have been left in limbo as donors grapple with the problem.
But a newly established science foundation that has taken control of programmes stripped from the academy is bringing over many of the former AAS senior management staff and has been unable to issue any guarantee it won't face similar problems.
Crisis at the academy
As the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the eyes of the world turned towards research, the AAS was in turmoil. Instead of beefing up its ranks, it was culling operational staff, while up to 2,000 research projects were plunged into doubt.
Interviews with former staff members, as well as documents seen by SciDev.Net, paint a picture of an organisation in disarray.
One former AAS staff member, who was made redundant along with around half of the academy's 100 employees, told SciDev.Net that losing their job during a pandemic was "devastating".
The staff member, who has knowledge of internal procedures and who asked not to be named because they feared it may jeopardise their chances of getting a job in the future, said that the governing council lost confidence in the academy's leadership.
"The governing council was constantly accusing [some senior leadership] and the senior management team of making decisions independently without consulting them," the former employee said.
"The bone of contention was really on employee remuneration and salary increases of senior management team members, and allowances for select members of the senior management team that were not in keeping with the policies of AAS."
In
The Deloitte report, which SciDev.Net has seen, highlighted allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud, and revealed that salary increases in 2018 for senior management exceeded the five per cent limit set by the governing council - in some cases increasing by up to 38 per cent.
The finance and compliance committee noted in 2020 that there was "no sound justification for the wide variations in [salary] increases" that had been proposed, according to the report.
In other years, some senior staff signed their own salary increase letters, the Deloitte report said.
A follow-up audit by South African legal firm ENSafrica identified a potential instance of fraud, potential misconduct and instances of unauthorised salary increases for some senior staff.
Despite multiple requests, SciDev.Net was unable to secure an interview with anyone at the AAS. The AAS did not respond to questions about whether any legal cases have been brought against the former staff named in the audit reports.
Internal rivalries
Known as AESA, several multi-million-dollar programmes fell under the programme, including the leadership and training programme DELTAS, the genome research project H3Africa (Human Heredity and Health in
All three of these projects have been transferred to the Science for
H3Africa and DELTAS, which support research on Africa's most urgent health challenges, were handed over to AESA and the AAS by Wellcome in 2016.
Then-director of AESA,
SciDev.Net made requests to speak with Kariuki, who is now executive director at the
However, observers argue that the academy should never have been put in the position of handling grants in the millions of dollars, while insiders have told SciDev.Net that the AESA programme had a higher budget than the AAS' endowment fund, which is largely supported by governments.
"There was a feeling that AESA was becoming an organisation within an organisation ... as it had massive funds compared to AAS itself," the former employee told SciDev.Net.
And the maze that is the grants management pipeline is impeding institutional growth in
Fonn says that research projects should be directly funded, rather than grants being disseminated through intermediary bodies. "Institutional capacity to manage funds can never grow in
Projects grind to a halt
The collapse in confidence in the AAS and the resulting financial disruption has meant many projects are in hiatus.
Fonn tells SciDev.Net that the lack of certainty in science is driving Africa's "brain drain".
"Africans need to know their future is secure in
Fonn is the co-director of the AESA-funded
She said the halt in AESA funding has affected her project, which was funded under the DELTAS training scheme. Funding dried up after the first five-year phase of
"We really need critical masses of PhDs and research fellows to realise change in
"The delay or withdrawal in funding has interrupted the dynamics of our strategy of building critical masses of researchers in
SciDev.Net has spoken with other project leads who say their research and training programmes have similarly been affected. They chose not to be named out of concern that it would affect future funding opportunities.
Funding the future
Major donors have confirmed to SciDev.Net that they had pulled funding from the AAS due to governance concerns.
A spokesperson for the
"This was due to governance challenges that made it difficult for the programs run under the AESA platform to continue without disruption," the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for
"This support ended on
A Wellcome spokesperson told SciDev.Net: "We're continuing to fund programmes that were delivered by the AAS/AESA, but due to ongoing governance challenges at the AAS, we have appointed PwC Kenya to administer the funding on an interim basis. In the longer term, we would like to come to an agreement with an appropriate Africa-based organisation to manage these programmes."
While these programmes had already begun to appear on the
Wellcome announced that it would deliver £6.5 million (
While the announcement did not mention the second phase of DELTAS, Wellcome told SciDev.Net in a statement: "We're fully committed to Deltas II. We understand that teams have been waiting to get started and we know this can be difficult. We hope to be able to provide more information on the start of the programme in the coming months."
New foundation, old problems?
The Science for
Concerns that the
Many of the senior management staff of AAS who were made redundant or resigned when international donors pulled their funding, are now employed by the Science for
"The decision to establish this organisation came as a relief to many employees who had been made redundant at AAS," the former AAS employee told SciDev.Net.
"The AAS is becoming a highly political outfit. We have seen the governance situation become ugly, with people howling insults at each other."
While the establishment of the SFA foundation was seen by some as an end to the period of disruption, the organisation did not provide any response when SciDev.Net asked how it would avoid the governance issues that ensnared the AAS, given that it is employing many of the same people.
The foundation also did not respond to questions about whether processes had been put in place to ensure finances and grants programmes are properly managed, or how trust would be built among donors who transferred their programmes from the AAS to the
Renewing trust
Science leaders outside of the
Bi Crépin Pene, technical advisor to the president of Côte d'Ivoire's
"The crisis within the AAS has no impact on the activities of ASCAD," said Pene. "However, ASCAD will be able to draw lessons from it to further refine its governance in order to sustainably maintain a good climate of trust with not only its members but with its financial partners."
In
Himla Soodyall is the executive director of the
However, she says that single-country academies are likely best equipped to handle large pools of money, rather than continental bodies. "When you have membership across countries, and staff from various countries supporting activities, I would imagine it would become difficult to follow a particular rule for compliance," Soodyall said.
And as the AAS' 2018-2022 strategy nears its end, questions continue to hang over the future of Africa's eponymous science academy.
This article was produced by SciDev.Net's Sub-Saharan
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