What three African research institutions told us about running a TTO
Three public health-research institutions — the South African Medical Research Council (est. 2004), Kenya Medical Research Institute (est. 2007) and National Health Laboratory Service (est. 2019) — responded to an 18-question survey on their Technology Transfer Offices. The offices are uniformly small (1–3.5 staff) and embedded inside their parent institution: none is a separate legal entity and none has its own board.
Two themes recur across every respondent: funding and management / stakeholder buy-in. Funding is named in “what would you do differently”, “advice” or “lessons learnt” by all three, and buy-in by two of three. Every assertion below is footnoted with a -style marker — click it to inspect the exact raw response the claim rests on.
The three respondents
| Institution | Country | Est. | Staff (Yr 1) | Staff (now) | Legal entity? | Own board? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAMRC South African Medical Research Council | South Africa | 2004 | 3 | 3.5 | No | No |
| KEMRI Kenya Medical Research Institute | Kenya | 2007 | 2 | 1 | No | No |
| NHLS National Health Laboratory Service | South Africa | 2019 | 2 | 3* | No | No |
When they were established
Staffing: small offices, mixed trajectories
On the professional/support split, the offices differ in shape: SAMRC reports 2 professionals to 0.5 support, KEMRI is 1-to-1, and NHLS leans the other way with 1 professional to 2 support . Professional roles are described narrowly — a “Tech Transfer Manager” (SAMRC), “IP Management” (KEMRI) and a “Manager of the TTO” (NHLS) .
Governance: embedded, not standalone
Every respondent answered No to both “Is the TTO a separate legal entity?” and “Does the TTO have its own separate Board?” . Oversight instead runs through the parent institution's executives: SAMRC's TTO is overseen by a Senior Program Manager and Executive Director, with an Executive Management Committee approving IP transactions; KEMRI reports to a Deputy Director of Resource Development & Knowledge Management; NHLS reports up through an Executive for Academic Affairs, Research and Quality Assurance .
What the offices actually do
“Manage all responsibilities of the SAMRC with respect to the IPR Act, including identifying, evaluating, protecting and commercialising IP, facilitating further product development, reporting to NIPMO, raising awareness and advising on IP, reviewing IP clauses in contracts.” SAMRC
“Identification, Protection and Commercialization / Utilization of IP.” KEMRI
“Compliance of IPR Act and contract management, Invention disclosure and IP management.” NHLS
The common spine — identify → protect → commercialise IP — appears in all three, with the two South African offices additionally citing statutory IPR Act compliance and contract management .
If they could start again today
Asked what they would do differently, two of three respondents land on funding. KEMRI would secure “better funding for the TTO activities” and NHLS would prioritise “stakeholders buy-in and organise more funding”. SAMRC is the outlier: it answered simply “No” .
How they build trust with researchers
Each office names a different trust-building strength. SAMRC points to advocacy (“help raise funding and represent their interests in all IP matters”), KEMRI to awareness (“creation of awareness among the research staff”), and NHLS to process reliability — contract management (DTAs, MTAs, bilateral agreements) and a researcher support system (AARMS) .
Outsourcing: almost none
Outsourcing is rare. SAMRC and NHLS both answered “None” . KEMRI is the only one that outsources anything, and only narrowly: “may outsource patent drafting where necessary” .
Advice for a new TTO
The advice splits into two camps. Buy-in & funding comes from KEMRI (“management buy-in is crucial… funding is also necessary — adequate budgetary allocation”) and NHLS (“secure stakeholders buy-in and sustainable funding”) . SAMRC offers a sequencing strategy instead: tailor the office to the institution's research intensity, spend the first year “establishing trust with the researchers”, and “build capacity over time rather than starting with all bells and whistles” .
Big lessons learnt
“Nothing is standard or predictable and innovations take patience and funding to get to market. At least 1 experienced TT Manager is important. Each technogy is a journey that requires lots of hands on support.” SAMRC
“Management buy-in is crucial. Changes in top management do affect the performance of the TTO a lot. IP Management is yet to be fully embraced as important within African research Institutes.” KEMRI
“Funding and sustainability is not guaranteed.” NHLS
Cross-cutting the three: every office names funding somewhere across its “do differently / advice / lessons” answers, and two of three name management or stakeholder buy-in . SAMRC adds a distinct, operational lesson: hire at least one experienced TT manager and expect each technology to be a long, hands-on journey .
Question explorer
Data-quality notes
SAMRC staff numbers don't reconcile
Total staff (3.5) ≠ professionals (2) + support (0.5) = 2.5 — a gap of 1.0. Likely FTE-style fractional accounting rather than a literal headcount .
NHLS “current” staff are phrased in the past tense
NHLS answers headcount as “There were 3 while the office was still active” — implying the office may no longer be active at the time of response . Its “lessons learnt” — “funding and sustainability is not guaranteed” — is consistent with an office that has struggled to stay funded .
The “governance” question was misunderstood by two of three
KEMRI explicitly wrote “I don't understand the question clearly” , and NHLS restated its reporting line in the governance field . The governance conclusions in this report therefore lean primarily on SAMRC's structural description and the separate “reports to” field.
Sample size is three
All patterns above (e.g. “no TTO is a separate legal entity”, “funding is the dominant concern”) come from three responses . They are observations about this sample, not estimates about African TTOs in general.
Minor textual artifacts in the source
KEMRI's “lessons learnt” contains a line-break artifact (“…performance of the TTO a lot. / / IP Management is yet to be fully embraced…”) preserved verbatim from the form export . SAMRC's lesson contains a typo (“technogy”) left as-answered . Both are reproduced faithfully above.