Introduction

The Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation) is a pan-African, non-profit, and public charity organisation that supports, strengthens, and promotes science and innovation in Africa. The SFA Foundation is committed to improving African people's quality of life and promoting research uptake in communities, industry, and the public sector. We serve the African research ecosystem by designing, funding, and managing programmes that support excellent science and innovation; and that build and reinforce environments that are conducive for scientists to thrive and produce quality research that impacts development. SFA Foundation is distinctive in that it focuses on the ecosystem surrounding research and the production of research itself. It also supports initiatives that directly influence the quantity, quality, and impact of research, but are not part of specific research projects. SFA Foundation operations are hosted within the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) as a programme in the Republic of Kenya.

The Africa Research Management Capacity Strengthening Programme (REMACS Programme Africa)

The REMACS Programme is designed to fill the critical gaps in the African research ecosystem to support a vibrant research culture and leadership at research institutions. It seeks to build the expertise necessary to create and sustain robust research enterprises and environments at institutions in Africa. The Programme’s overall goal is to address systemic level challenges, at institutions, in creating and sustaining enabling research environments by addressing systemic level challenges, namely, institutional leadership, sustainability, standards and developing individual capacity. Strand Two – sustainability is about working with institutions to create mechanisms that will sustain the research enterprises supported by efficient research management functions through a structured framework. This will accurately determine the costs and set the appropriate prices for research projects transparently. In recent years, funding bodies have increasingly allowed costs for research management and paid indirect costs of African research institutions, even if there is still a disparity with the Global North. The ESSENCE Group for Health Research’s good practice document ‘The Five Keys to Improving Research Costing and Pricing in Low and Middle-Income countries’ (2020) provides fundamental principles to guide the costing and pricing of research.

Overview

Research activities in African academic and research institutions have surged, highlighting the need for strong research support systems to foster impactful, world-class research that drives innovation and economic growth. However, many institutions face challenges in recovering the full costs of conducting research, as comprehensive cost accounting practices are often lacking. Researchers, in their efforts to reduce budgets and secure grants, frequently exclude indirect costs essential to institutional operations, inadvertently burdening institutional resources. This unsustainable approach can lead to project abandonment when institutions are unable to subsidize these hidden costs.

The SFA Foundation seeks proposals from qualified consultants to develop comprehensive research costing and pricing models and toolkits that are easily adaptable by universities and research institutions in Africa. These toolkits will be instrumental in aiding institutions to cost and price research projects efficiently and effectively. The consultant will review several good practice documents and guidelines including the "Five Keys to Improving Research Costing and Pricing in low and middle-income countries" document, and policies from select funders and universities such as budgeting guidelines, indirect/overheads use, etc.

This framework will establish a robust methodology for calculating true research costs and prices, enabling institutions to recover full costs effectively and sustainably, reducing their reliance on subsidies, and allowing their research enterprises to thrive. The findings of this review will inform the development of model frameworks and toolkits which could be easily adopted by African universities to enable proper research costing and pricing that will contribute to sustainability for the research enterprises.

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