Dynamics and Ecosystems of Scientific Publication in Africa: a Scientometric Analysis over the Two First Decades of the 21st Century

A scientometric analysis of Africa’s scientific publication over the past two decades shows first that eleven nations representing half of Africa’s population provided 88% of its indexed scientific publications. These highly productive nations have English or Arabic as official language and were mainly under British colonization (except for the Maghreb countries and Ethiopia). The other half of Africa’s population is settling for a modest 12% of internationally visible publications. A second finding is that African shares in the world indexed publications seem to stabilize to a level of 3.3% in 2021 while they only weighed 1.3% in 2001. These shares are relatively high in Public Health, Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Immunology, Environmental Sciences and Economics and very low in Neuroscience, Cognitive Sciences and Nanoscience. A comparison of publication dynamics among the most productive African nations highlights resilience of highly institutionalized, decentralized and autonomous research institutions and universities. This seems to be particularly the case in regions with former British colonial domination. When comparing African publication dynamics, it appears clearly that the previously undisputed South African leadership is increasingly contested by Egypt which has recently accelerated the pace of its scientific publications outside Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). In terms of research impact, number of internationally ranked universities and highly cited researchers, South Africa still has an undisputed leadership in the continent, followed by Egypt and far outstripping Nigeria, Kenya and the three main Maghreb countries: Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Our results thus show a recent resumption of the scientific dynamic in Nigeria after a slowdown in the early 2010s. The three Maghreb countries have comparable positions but very different dynamics. We note a continuous increase in Moroccan scientific production, an important loss of speed in Tunisia and the same is also seen in Algeria but to a lesser extent. Senegal has a relatively high number of researchers per capita but still lacks visibility in terms of scientific impact. The last significant elements concern the recent important increase of Ethiopian publications and the stable scientific production systems of Ghana and Kenya. Finally, it is important to note that the scientometric analysis presented here is mainly based on numbers of articles, reviews and conference papers and their citations listed in the two major scientometric databases (Scopus and Web-of-Science). It has consequently biases related to an underrepresentation of HSS and journals published in Africa and to the strategic agendas of the two private companies producing these databases.