US NIH lifts ban on new research funding for South Africa

In what could be viewed as a significant thaw in United States-South African relations, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has lifted a ban on funding new scientific research in South Africa .

The journal Science is reporting that the US NIH has ended the sweeping funding ban imposed last year by President Donald Trump, reopening the possibility of American government support for research projects in South Africa.

The decision is important because South Africa has long been a major research partner for American scientists, particularly in areas such as HIV, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

The funding freeze followed Trump’s decision to halt US foreign assistance to South Africa, amid an increasingly strained relationship between Washington and Pretoria over both foreign and domestic policy disagreements.

But according to Science, NIH Director Dr Jay Bhattacharya determined in an internal staff memo that research funding was legally different from foreign aid – a distinction at the heart of the decision.

For South African researchers, this could reopen an important source of funding after months of uncertainty but there is a significant catch – the NIH says future projects carried out overseas would have to demonstrate a clear scientific reason for being conducted outside the United States.

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