Visual
What Is the African Research Landscape?
The African research landscape refers to the broad network of research activity, institutions, researchers, journals, publications, disciplines, funding structures, and scholarly communities that make up research connected to Africa.
It encompasses research produced across the continent, research conducted in African contexts, and research focused on African countries, societies, environments, economies, cultures, and other subjects. The landscape is diverse, spanning different countries, academic systems, languages, disciplines, institutions, and research communities.
What Makes Up the African Research Landscape?
The African research landscape consists of many interconnected parts of the research ecosystem.
These include:
- Researchers: Scholars who produce and contribute to academic and scientific research.
- Universities and institutions: Organizations that conduct, support, and develop research.
- Academic journals: Publications through which research findings are communicated.
- Research publications: Papers, reports, books, conference contributions, and other scholarly outputs.
- Research communities: Groups and networks connected through shared research interests.
- Research topics: Questions, subjects, and areas of inquiry explored by researchers.
- Disciplines: Academic fields in which research is conducted.
- Research infrastructure: Systems, facilities, repositories, databases, and other resources that support research.
- Research networks: Connections between researchers and institutions across geographic and disciplinary boundaries.
These elements interact to form a broader research environment rather than operating independently.
How Does the African Research Landscape Work?
Research activity develops through relationships between researchers, institutions, publications, funding, infrastructure, and scholarly communities.
A typical research cycle may involve:
- Research questions emerge: Researchers identify problems, knowledge gaps, or areas requiring further investigation.
- Institutions provide support: Universities, research centres, laboratories, and other organizations provide research environments and resources.
- Research is conducted: Researchers collect evidence, analyse information, conduct experiments, or undertake other forms of scholarly inquiry.
- Findings are communicated: Research is shared through journals, books, conferences, repositories, and other channels.
- Research becomes discoverable: Publications and researcher information are made available through academic databases, indexes, institutional platforms, and other discovery systems.
- Knowledge connects: Researchers build on existing work, collaborate, and develop new research questions.
This continuous interaction contributes to the development of African scholarship.
What Research Areas Are Part of the African Research Landscape?
The African research landscape covers virtually every major academic discipline.
Examples include:
Health and Medicine
Research includes public health, infectious diseases, healthcare systems, epidemiology, nutrition, maternal health, and medical science.
Agriculture and Food Systems
Researchers investigate agricultural productivity, food security, farming systems, livestock, food supply chains, and climate resilience.
Climate and Environment
Research addresses climate change, biodiversity, conservation, environmental health, water resources, renewable energy, and sustainability.
Education
Research includes educational access, teaching and learning, higher education, literacy, educational technology, and education policy.
Technology and Innovation
Researchers work on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, telecommunications, software, engineering, financial technology, and other emerging technologies.
Social Sciences and Humanities
Research covers history, culture, languages, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics, governance, law, literature, and other areas.
The African Research Landscape Across Regions
Research activity is distributed across Africa’s five major regions:
- North Africa
- West Africa
- Central Africa
- East Africa
- Southern Africa
Each region has its own research institutions, scholarly communities, research priorities, publishing environments, and areas of specialization.
At the same time, many research questions extend across regional boundaries. Researchers may collaborate on issues such as climate change, public health, migration, agriculture, energy, and economic development.
Why Is the African Research Landscape Important?
Understanding the research landscape provides context for where knowledge is being produced, who is producing it, what subjects are being studied, and how different parts of the research ecosystem are connected.
It can help with:
- Research discovery: Understanding where relevant research can be found.
- Researcher discovery: Identifying scholars working in particular fields.
- Institutional discovery: Finding institutions with relevant expertise.
- Research collaboration: Identifying potential partners and research networks.
- Research planning: Understanding existing work and areas of research activity.
- Knowledge development: Identifying emerging topics and potential research gaps.
- Research visibility: Making the scale and diversity of African scholarship easier to understand.
The African Research Landscape and Research Discoverability
The size and diversity of the African research landscape can make discovery challenging. Research information may be distributed across institutional websites, academic journals, repositories, databases, national systems, and international platforms.
This fragmentation can make it difficult to answer basic questions such as:
- Who is researching a particular topic?
- Which institutions are active in a field?
- Which journals publish relevant research?
- What research is being produced in a particular region?
- How are researchers and institutions connected?
Research indexes and discovery systems can help organize this information and provide additional pathways through the landscape.
The African Research Landscape and Research Visibility
Research visibility concerns how easily research and the people or institutions behind it can be found and recognized.
Visibility can be influenced by:
- Academic publishing
- Journal indexing
- Research databases
- Institutional repositories
- Researcher profiles
- Scholarly networks
- Search engines
- Research discovery platforms
Improving visibility does not simply mean increasing the number of publications. It also involves making existing research easier for the right audiences to discover and connect with.
Challenges Within the African Research Landscape
The African research landscape is diverse, but that diversity can also create challenges for research discovery and connection.
These can include:
- Research information distributed across many platforms
- Differences between national and institutional research systems
- Uneven access to research infrastructure
- Limited visibility of some research outputs
- Fragmented researcher and institutional information
- Differences in publishing practices
- Language and disciplinary differences
- Difficulty discovering research across national and regional boundaries
These challenges can make it harder to develop a complete picture of African research activity.
African Research Landscape at Afropus
Afropus is being developed as a research discovery and indexing platform focused on making African scholarship easier to find and connect.
Its index is organized around four core areas:
- Journals
- Researchers
- Institutions
- Ideas
These areas provide different entry points into the African research landscape. A user may discover a researcher through a topic, find an institution through a researcher, or discover a journal through an area of research.
The planned Afropus Index covers 55 jurisdictions across North, West, Central, East, and Southern Africa.
Related Terms
- Afropus
- African Research Ecosystem
- African Research Discovery
- African Research
- African Scholarship
- African Research Communities
- African Research Institutions
- African Researchers
- African Academic Journals
- Research Discoverability
FAQs
What is the African research landscape?
The African research landscape is the broad network of researchers, institutions, journals, publications, disciplines, research communities, infrastructure, and other activities that make up research connected to Africa.
What subjects are covered by the African research landscape?
It covers virtually every academic discipline, including medicine, public health, agriculture, climate science, education, technology, economics, social sciences, humanities, law, and engineering.
Does the African research landscape only include research produced in Africa?
No. It can include research produced by African researchers and institutions, research conducted in African contexts, and research focused on African subjects, even when researchers or institutions are located outside the continent.
Why can the African research landscape be difficult to discover?
Research information can be distributed across many institutions, journals, repositories, databases, and research systems, making it difficult to see connections across countries, disciplines, and research communities.
How can research indexes help?
Research indexes can organize information about researchers, journals, institutions, topics, and publications, creating additional pathways for discovering and connecting scholarly work.
How does Afropus relate to the African research landscape?
Afropus is being developed to help users discover and explore the African research landscape through an index focused on journals, researchers, institutions, and ideas, with a planned scope covering 55 jurisdictions across five African regions.