Over 500 projects submitted for 40 available grants. The response to the call for applications for the Competitive Fund for Impact Research, launched as part of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation's Espoir-Jeunes program, speaks volumes about the state of the sector: a vibrant scientific community, an abundance of ideas, but a structurally unmet demand for funding. This fund is a courageous response. It deserves to be understood, supported, and expanded.

A deliberate choice in the face of limited resources

The Fund's logic is simple and honest: rather than spreading scarce resources across the entire spectrum of national research, it focuses efforts on projects with the greatest potential impact. This is the principle of competitive funding, and it is consistent with the country's actual constraints.

The figures speak for themselves. Of the MESRI's 316 billion FCFA budget in 2026, barely 8 billion, or 2.6%, is allocated to research and innovation. The rest is absorbed by teaching costs and university social services. In this context, the State cannot fund everything. It therefore finances the best projects, rigorously selected by a committee of 30 internationally renowned experts.

The Fund's structure reflects this differentiated ambition. The 40 selected projects are divided into three tiers: 24 projects at 25 million FCFA for young researchers and emerging ideas; 10 projects at 50 million FCFA for teams in the development phase; and 6 projects at 150 million FCFA for high-impact, structuring consortia of excellence. The total budget amounts to 2 billion FCFA—approximately 3 million euros—an additional injection representing 25% of the existing annual budget of the MESRI Research program.

This system embodies a clear philosophy: "I don't have the means to finance everyone, but I can finance the best, in a transparent and rigorous way." This is a break with the distribution logic that has long prevailed.

What regional experience teaches us

This initiative builds on an existing trend. Senegal has already experimented with this type of mechanism through the National Fund for Agricultural and Agri-food Research (FNRAA), established in the early 2000s, which introduced calls for proposals in the agricultural sector. While its contributions were significant, its limitations were also revealing: limited sectoral coverage, a strong dependence on external funding, and weak mechanisms for disseminating results. Furthermore, the Fund for Scientific and Technological Research and Innovation (FIRST), under the supervision of the Ministry of Research, supports small-scale projects with funding of up to approximately 20 million CFA francs. However, these amounts remain insufficient to bridge the gap between prototyping and industrialization. In this context, the new Fund is expected to build upon these experiences to consolidate a more structured, sustainable, and impact-oriented funding mechanism.

In the sub-region, Burkina Faso has built a more robust model since 2011 with FONRID (National Fund for Research and Innovation for Development), created by Decree No. 2011-828/PRES/PM/MRSI/MEF and governed by Law No. 010-2013/AN. Operational since 2012, this multi-sectoral fund has an annual budget of approximately 1 to 1.2 billion CFA francs and has demonstrated that stable governance, with a scientific committee of 20 experts and a multi-stakeholder board of directors, can guarantee the continuity of such a mechanism beyond political cycles.

Even more ambitious is Nigeria's TETFund, created in 1993 and reformed in 2011, which finances higher education and research through a mandatory levy on the profits of companies registered in Nigeria, a rate increased to 3% by the 2023 budget law. In 2025, this fund received a record allocation of 1.6 trillion naira. The lesson is crucial: a non-discretionary mechanism, anchored in the economic fabric, generates predictable and substantial resources, independent of annual budgetary decisions.

Expected impacts, risks to anticipate

In the short term, the Fund will directly mobilize between 200 and 320 researchers working on projects covering the country's priority sectors: agriculture and food sovereignty, health, energy, digital technology, and governance. For laboratories often at a standstill due to a lack of resources, this is a real lifeline. In the medium term, if the model is renewed annually, it can sustainably structure the Senegalese research ecosystem: increased indexed publications, patent filings, and the emergence of young PhDs in strategic fields.

However, several risks must be anticipated for this ambition to materialize. The first is institutional concentration: without a corrective mechanism, any competitive fund tends to favor the best-endowed institutions, to the detriment of regional universities such as Thiès, Saint-Louis, Ziguinchor, Bambey, and the University of Eastern Senegal. An explicit geographical quota, reserving at least 40% of projects for institutions outside the Dakar metropolitan area, would be a simple and verifiable guarantee.

The second risk is a shift towards academic publication at the expense of applied research. An "impact" fund must demand concrete deliverables: prototypes, tested public policy tools, and transferable solutions. This also implies finally building the missing valorization structures—technology transfer offices and a patent policy accessible to researchers—without which the results will remain shelved.

The third risk, perhaps the most fundamental, is that of non-renewal. African history is littered with promising initiatives that have disappeared with the ebb and flow of political change. For this Fund to become a policy and not just a one-off program, it must be enshrined in law, endowed with a guaranteed minimum budget, and subject to a public external evaluation. The adoption of the legislation governing research in Senegal, under discussion for over ten years, is a prerequisite that can no longer be postponed.

To go further: mobilizing the private sector and anchoring the Fund for the long term

The Youth Hope Fund is a starting point. For it to become the lever for a lasting transformation, three additions are essential.

The first is the mobilization of the private sector, which is currently almost entirely absent from the funding of national research. Structural mechanisms can change this without waiting for the goodwill of businesses. Integrating a R&D contribution clause into the specifications of major public contracts, amounting to 0.5% to 1% of the contract value, would create a significant financial flow. Similarly, oil and gas exploitation contracts—Sangomar, Grand Tortue Ahmeyim, Yakaar, Teranga —and mining permits offer a historic opportunity to link the exploitation of natural resources to an investment in the country's scientific capital, following the model institutionalized by producing countries. Finally, tax incentives—increased deductions for R&D expenditures in partnership with universities, exemptions for the creation of industrial chairs—would make this investment economically rational for businesses.

As an order of magnitude: if state revenues from the extractive sector reach 300 to 500 billion FCFA at cruising speed, a contribution of 0.5% would generate 1.5 to 2.5 billion FCFA annually for research — the equivalent of the Hope-Youth Fund renewed each year, without soliciting the current state budget.

The second key element is talent retention. Funding doctoral students without offering them career prospects within the national research system is tantamount to training candidates for emigration. According to the African Union, the continent already loses some 70,000 skilled professionals annually, costing it approximately $4 billion, according to the UNDP. The Fund must be accompanied by an active policy of creating permanent teaching and research positions, already initiated by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) with the creation of 500 positions in the nine public universities, and by an improvement in working conditions and salaries.

The third key element is regional openness. A project involving several universities within the ECOWAS region costs the same as a project led by a single national university, but produces more robust results and builds lasting networks. Allocating 15% of the budget to collaborative projects involving at least two ECOWAS countries would strengthen both the scientific quality of the proposals and the integration of the regional knowledge space.

Research is the foundation of sovereignty

The Competitive Fund for Impact Research is more than just a funding program: it signals Senegal's commitment to making research a strategic priority, even with limited resources. African precedents—Senegal's FNRAA, Burkina Faso's FONRID, and Nigeria's TETFund—confirm that this type of mechanism works, provided it is institutionalized, reliably funded, and open to private sector contributions.

The enthusiasm generated by the 500 applications should not only inspire pride. It should also raise awareness: if so many researchers are waiting for funding, it means the deficit is structural and the Fund alone will not suffice. We must go further—through legislation, taxation, extractive contracts, and public procurement.

This is a national project. It is up to the State, businesses, universities, and civil society to carry it out together. The Minister of Higher Education has laid the foundation stone. Now the structure must be built.

El Hadji Boubacar SECK

Teacher-Researcher, Polytechnic School of Thiès

Mamadou Doudou NGOM

Lecturer-Researcher, University of Eastern Senegal

Mouhamadou THIAM

Teacher-Researcher, Polytechnic School of Thiès

References:

MESRI Senegal, Draft Finance Law 2026 (Le Soleil, April 24, 2026);

Decree No. 2011-828/PRES/PM/MRSI/MEF and Law No. 010-2013/AN (FONRID, Burkina Faso);

TETFund Act No. 16 (2011), Finance Acts Nigeria 2021 and 2023;

African Union, Migration Policy Framework for Africa 2018-2027;

World Bank, WDI — Senegal R&D expenditure (latest available data: 0.58% of GDP, 2015).