Towards regional scientific integration in Africa? Evidence from co-publications

Regional scientific integration is a critical pathway for the development of an integrated African research area and knowledge-based society. On the African continent, progresses in the scientific production and integration have remained limited. The high-level policy commitments and the strategies under the intertwined sub-regional economic groupings, have only diversely contributed to policy alignment and coordination in the area of science, technology and innovation (STI). In this context, this paper provides a first and original assessment of the role of regional specific factors in shaping scientific collaboration on the continent. For this purpose, our study builds upon the proximity approach to analyse the determinants of scientific collaboration between African countries, using co-publications data from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science. Our results suggest that the majority of African regional economic communities or RECs do not yet have an additional significant effect on scientific co-publication. Nevertheless, important region-specific factors seem to be at play such as the shared ethnical language, membership in the African and Malagasy council for higher education (CAMES) and the presence of a third common European partner. Existing policies that aim at the development of an African research area could leverage existing and emerging regional excellence networks and novel coordination models to accelerate the process of scientific integration in Africa.

DOSSO Mafini;  CASSI Lorenzo;  MESCHEBA Wilfriedo; 

2022-10-04

ELSEVIER

JRC130246

0048-7333 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733322001512?via%3Dihub,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130246,   

10.1016/j.respol.2022.104630 (online),