State of Science and Technology in Africa Page 1 of 19
The State of Science and Technology in Africa (2000-2004): A Scientometric
Assessment
Anastassios Pouris* and Anthipi Pouris**
*Anastassios.pouris@up.ac.za
Institute for Technological Innovation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
**apouris@nrf.ac.za
Institutional Capacity Development Grants, National Research Foundation, PO Box 2600, Pretoria 0001, South
Africa and University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Abstract
This article reports for first time the state of science and technology in the African Continent on the basis of two
scientometric indicators - number of research publications and number of patents awarded. Our analysis shows that
Africa produced 68 945 publications over the 2000-2004 period or 1.8% of the World’s publications. In comparison
India produced 2.4% and Latin America 3.5% of the World’s research. More detailed analysis reveals that research
in Africa is concentrated in just two countries – South Africa and Egypt. These two counties produce just above
50% of the Continent’s publications and the top 8 countries produce above 80% of the Continent’s research.
Disciplinary analysis reveals that few African countries have the minimum number of scientists required for the
functioning of a scientific discipline. Examination of the Continent’s inventive profile, as manifested in patents,
indicates that Africa produces less than one thousand of the world’s inventions. Furthermore 88% of the Continent’s
inventive activity in concentrated in South Africa. The article recommends that the African Governments should pay
particular attention in developing their national research systems.
Keywords: Africa; Science; Technology; Research; Patents; Publications
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Introduction
Monitoring and evaluating the various facets of the scientific enterprise is a necessary and integral part of
science policy. Rising costs of research and development and competing disciplinary claims for financial
resources require intelligent allocation of resources, which presupposes knowledge of the activities and
performance of the innovation system.
The development of science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators has grown substantially
internationally during the last twenty years. Their ability to enlighten political choices, by informing and
allowing decisions to be objective and depersonalized, has been the main force behind their popularity.
Additional factors enhancing the importance of STI indicators have been the central role assumed by
science and technology as a social resource; the continuing expansion of knowledge and globalisation;
and the magnitude of the challenges undertaken, in terms of research, technology and investment.
Many countries and international organizations have established bodies specifically dedicated to the
analysis and production of information on, and the development of, indicators for science, technology and
innovation. Examples of this are the OECD based Network of Experts on Science and Technology
Indicators (NESTI); the European Union's Eurostat; UNESCO's Institute of Statistics; the Network on
Science and Technology Indicators (RICyT) in the Ibero-America and the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation and Pacific Economic Cooperation Council for the Asia-Pacific countries.
Those agencies provide services and conduct studies requiring the coordination of interdisciplinary teams
under conditions encouraging a flexible mode of operations, the necessary academic independence, and
the capacity for planning medium- and long-term activities.
The importance of indicators has been recognised also in the African Continent in the first NEPAD
Ministerial Conference on Science and Technology.
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The NEPAD Declaration (NEPAD, 2003) commits to “develop and adopt common sets of indicators to
benchmark our national and regional systems of innovation” (paragraph 12).
The Declaration suggests that the system of indicators will “track the development and functioning of the
African national systems of innovation” and it will constitute the mainstay for the production of the
“Annual African Innovation Outlook”. The Outlook “will report on the developments in science,
technology and innovation in Africa at national, regional and continental level and will be produced by
the NEPAD Secretariat under the mandate of the Steering Committee and transmitted to the Ministers
Council for consideration”.
Furthermore, the indicators will inform the African Peer Review Mechanism which among others will
monitor the success of the African countries in the “effort to commit 1% of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) in public funds to research and development”.
However, up to date the African continent is the only Continent without an organisation/agency
responsible to promote and assist in the development of STI indicators and with scant scientometric
coverage in the open literature. Lack of scientometric’s expertise, disinterested science authorities and
lack of financial resources may account for this phenomenon.
This document aims to report the state of science and technology in the African Continent as it is
represented by two of the commonest used scientometric indicators internationally - research publications
and awarded patents. These indicators are probably the first to be included in an African monitoring
system as they are easily and reliably available and they do not require expertise in the African Continent.
Approach
One of the most efficient and objective methods of assessing research and innovation performance is
through scientometric indicators. An indicator is defined (DHEW, 1970) as “statistics of direct normative
interest which facilitates concise, comprehensive and balanced judgments about the condition of major
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aspects of a society. It is in all cases a direct measure of welfare and is subject to the interpretation that, if
it changes in the “right” direction, while other things remain equal, things have gotten better or people
better off.”
Scientometric analysis, the quantitative study of the innovation system, is based mainly on bibliometric
and patent indicators. In bibliometrics the number of publications in a field is considered as an indicator
of research activity. Similarly in patent analysis the number of patents awarded to an institution or a
country is used as an indicator of technological activity. Patent indicators – within the science and
technology (S&T) context – are used to measure inventive performance, diffusion of knowledge and
internationalization of innovative activities – across countries, firms, industries, technology areas, etc.
The philosophy underlying the use of bibliometric 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)
We should emphasize that there are many trained scientists who are not required to publish. They may
perform managerial or administrative functions, teach available knowledge apply existing knowledge in
making new products and in providing services. However, the common characteristic of all these
scientists is that they are far away from the research front. They provide the infrastructure for the
producers of knowledge and they exploit the end results of research and development. In any case,
however, they cannot be considered as “knowledge” producers.
The importance of research publications lies among others in the fact that they are proxies of scientific
manpower available in different countries. (SCHUBERT ET AL 1986). This is a particular useful
characteristic for African countries which are lacking relative monitoring mechanisms of science,
technology and innovation.
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The same way, in which scientific articles are accepted as a legitimate reflection of scientific research,
patents are accepted as a reflection of technological achievements. GRILICHES (1990) has pointed out
that “Patent statistics remain a unique source for the analysis of the process of technical change. Nothing
else even comes close in the quantity of available data, accessibility, and potential industrial,
organizational, and technological detail.”
Bibliometric indicators and patent analysis possess a number of strengths that facilitates their universal
use. They are highly reliable because they are well defined and unambiguous. They facilitate detailed
categorisation and hence make possible the study of scientific and technological fields and sub-fields and
they make possible international comparisons. In the context of developing countries scientometric
indicators can provide unique insides of the strengths and weaknesses of the STI systems as other sources
of information are usually lacking.
Scientometric indicators are used internationally for monitoring purposes. In the USA the National
Science Foundation (NSB, 2004) is using bibliometrics and patent analysis to monitor the health of
American science and technology on a continuous basis; in Europe the European Commission (EC, 1997)
is using similar approaches in order to monitor the health of the European innovation system and the
OECD (2003) (is using the indicators for monitoring and comparative purposes).
For the bibliometric analysis we utilise the databases of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) –
Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. The
National Science Indicators database is used for this investigation. ISI currently indexes more than 6000
of the world’s leading scholarly scientific and technical journals, approximately 1800 social sciences
journals, and 1150 titles from the arts and humanities journals. All journals indexed by ISI are peer
reviewed. As a group, the ISI indexed set of journals represents an elite body of internationally
influential research publications. In these databases, ISI includes articles, notes, reviews and proceeding
papers but not items such as editorials, letters, corrections and abstracts. There is a substantial number of
