A scientometric assessment of the Southern Africa Development Community: science in the tip of Africa
Summary (1 min read)
Introduction
- The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been established in 1992 under Article 2 of the SADC Treaty.
- The SADC protocol on Science Technology and Innovation is a legally binding document aimed at regulating collaborative initiatives within the SADC region to support the implementation of the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan and Africa’s Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action.
- Establishment of collaborative regional R&D programmes in priority areas 4. Promotion of the value and application of IKS & technologies 5. Promotion of technology transfer and innovation 6.
- The article aims to outline trends in the research outputs of the fifteen countries; to identify their scientific specialisation and to report their collaborative patterns.
Methodology and Data
- Scientometric analysis is one of the most efficient and objective methods of assessing scientific performance.
- The philosophy underlying the use of scientometric indicators as performance measures has been summarized in De Solla Price’s statement that “for those who are working at the research front, publication is not just an indicator but, in a very strong sense, the end product of their creative effort.” (DE SOLLA PRICE, 1975).
- There are limited scientometric studies investigating science in the African continent and even fewer which focus exclusively in the continent.
- The most often used databases for such analyses are the citation indices of Thomson Reuters (formerly known as those of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)).
- An activity index larger than one reflects higher than average effort dedicated to the field and vice versa.
Results: SADCs Scientific Performance
- The small output of the SADC countries becomes profound if the authors take into account that the University of Pretoria in South Africa is producing approximately 1000 publications per year.
- Probably the most important issue that should be emphasised is that it is doubtful that the SADC countries will be able to meet the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG) with the existing research infrastructure.
- Portugal appears twice in the list, in collaboration with Angola and Mozambique.
- It should be emphasised that the major collaboration between Germany and South Africa and Germany and Namibia is in the field of space science.
Conclusion
- The objective of this article is to assess the state of science in the fifteen Southern Africa Development Community countries.
- South Africa produces only 0.55% of the world’s scientific literature.
- Identification of the research emphasis of the Community shows an emphasis on traditional research areas (agriculture, plant and animal sciences etc).
- There is an underemphasis in scientific areas promising to support innovation such as engineering, material sciences and molecular biology.
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Citations
8 citations
Cites background from "A scientometric assessment of the S..."
...The leadership role of South Africa in contributing to Africa’s knowledge base has been documented [8, 33, 36], while South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Tunisia have been identified as major contributors to the growth of scientific publications in Africa [34]....
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6 citations
Cites background from "A scientometric assessment of the S..."
...Besides this, those countries that have English as an official language usually have a colonial legacy with Anglo-Saxon countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia), and consequently have more Determinants of citation impact 49 collaboration with them (Mêgnigbêto 2013; Pouris 2010)....
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...Scientific areas with higher potential to support innovation, such as engineering, material sciences, molecular biology and social science have been underrepresented in terms of scientific output (Juma 2016; Pouris 2010)....
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6 citations
Cites background from "A scientometric assessment of the S..."
...The higher productivity and citation in applied scientific and technological fields, over those in the social sciences, also fits the known pattern for the tropics and for the world (Narváez- et al., 2002; Pouris, 2010; Mêgnigbêto, 2013)....
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...In the 2000s, South Africa produced 79 % of African scientific publications (Pouris, 2010)....
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6 citations
Additional excerpts
...1 3 Science category (Scholarly IPs) 2004- present 2004- 2008 2009- 2013 2014- present 1 3 In Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Mozambique and Afghanistan, the situation is different as the interest to Science in these nations was high in the 2004–2008 period before dramatically falling and finally disappearing in the 2014–2019 period (Figs....
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...2017), Somalia (Ibrahim 2018) and Mozambique (Pouris 2010)....
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...In Asia except former USSR and Africa, Science gradually lost ground to Nature and it currently attracts a major interest by scientific communities only in some countries like Papua New Guinea, Yemen, Mozambique and Angola (Fig....
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4 citations
Cites background from "A scientometric assessment of the S..."
...The link is significant for developing countries and has recently been confirmed in the case of South Africa (see Inglesi-Lotz and Pouris, 2010)....
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...…collaboration between Africans, it is often driven by non-African scientists (Mêgnigbêto, 2013; Quayle and Greer, 2014) based on former colonial ties (Confraria and Godinho, 2015) and output tends to be dominated by a single country in a region, like South Africa Community) (Pouris, 2010)....
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...There is little research collaboration between Africans, it is often driven by non-African scientists (Mêgnigbêto, 2013; Quayle and Greer, 2014) based on former colonial ties (Confraria and Godinho, 2015) and output tends to be dominated by a single country in a region, like South Africa Community) (Pouris, 2010)....
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References
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"A scientometric assessment of the S..." refers background in this paper
...‘‘These databases currently provide the best source of information to identify the basic research activity across all countries and fields of science’’ (Tijssen 2007)....
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...Examples include Shrum (1997), Narvaez-Berthelemot et al. (2002), Ingwersen and Jacobs (2004), Tijssen (2007), Pouris (1996) and others....
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159 citations
119 citations