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Science is at an inflection point in Africa. The past two decades have been marked by impressive growth: clinical publications in the Web of Science database involving at least one African country have more than fivefold increased since 2001 to more than 50,000 in 2018. But disparities within Africa remain stark. Most countries on the continent contributed less than 2% of those publications, and only one country – South Africa – is among the 50 most sensible countries and territories in the 2023 annual tables of the Nature Index.
At the root of this is a general expectation among observers and political scholars that African nations will invest in science and technology to drive Africa’s economic transformation. The African Union (AU) envisages that each member state will spend 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on studies and development. But according to the World Bank’s 2020 knowledge, only Egypt has managed to do so in recent years.
Low local investment has forced African scientists to rely heavily on foreign universities and organizations for investment and career progression opportunities. Researchers from African institutions collaborate with European colleagues, exchanging knowledge and fabrics while spending time at European universities. Of the ten most sensible countries participating in the Nature Index papers showing global North-South collaboration, some are in Europe. This year, the European Union (EU) and the AU sought to formalize those ties. Announced in July, the AU-EU Innovation Programme aims to “transform and turn the innovation capabilities and achievements of European and African researchers and innovators into tangible outcomes, such as products, services, businesses and jobs,” according to the European Commission.
Whether the agenda will make a substantial difference to African research and the working lives of its scientists is another matter. “It has the potential to spur science in Africa,” says Uzma Alam, lead of science-policy engagement at the Science for Africa (SFA) Foundation in Nairobi, Kenya. But for this to become a reality, there must be a rebalancing of partnerships between European and African researchers, colonially entrenched inequities in science need to be addressed, and there must be more accountability on all sides. “We need to place African scientists and leadership at the centre.”
The AU-EU Innovation Programme has four objectives grouped according to the priority areas for collaboration in studies between Europe and Africa: public health, green transition, innovation and technology. “These spaces can have a positive effect on life in Africa,” says Alam, whose organization consulted on the agenda.
The agenda recognizes the potential for two-way knowledge exchange between Europe and Africa, says Fifa Rahman, a global-health specialist working on equitable access to health technologies. She points to examples of Europe learning from Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as African scientists deploying virus tests in hospitals across Sierra Leone, Senegal and Nigeria before countries in Europe had organized such testing. Details for how African scientists will be involved in setting the agenda for the thematic areas of the EU–Africa research collaboration aren’t explicitly clear in the document, however. Such decisions should come from within Africa, led by African researchers, according to Christian Happi, a geneticist and director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer’s University in Ede, Nigeria. “Let them set the priority areas for research that they believe will be important for the development of the continent,” he says.
Olusola Oyewole, secretary-general of the Association of African Universities (AAU) in Accra, Ghana, says that although the agenda holds promise for Africa, it needs to ensure that all universities and industries across the continent work together to harness its benefits for good. He is concerned that otherwise only a few “elite” institutions will benefit.
Then there’s the question of funding. In June, just before the program was announced, some 2,000 leading universities and think tanks in Africa and Europe called for the program to be developed through committed investments. The hope was to pilot an Africa-EU scientific fund, in particular for the collaboration of studies between African and European scholars. Universities need that budget to be channelled through a built-in science, generation and innovation programme between Africa and the EU. Existing projects between the AU and the EU also deserve to be leveraged for the implementation of the innovation agenda, say university representatives. .
“Study investment and progression determine the results of studies in African countries and the study capacity we see across the continent,” says Oyewole, whose organization, the AUA, is one of the signatories of the call for clinical funding.
It would possibly be a few years before a scientific fund between Africa and the EU could materialise, especially as the next EU study programme will not start until 2028.
Some investment mechanisms already exist. ARISE, the African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence, identified in 2020 with €25 million ($27. 20 million) in EU investment. Coordinated through the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), a non-profit organization, based in Nairobi, it offers scholarships and supports forty-five high-level students at universities and institutes of study in 38 African countries. ARISE is helping grantees identify linkages and collaborations with universities and establishments in Africa and Europe, facilitating knowledge sharing.
Obed Ogega, director of ARISE at AAS, says the initiative allows early-career scientists to conduct cutting-edge studies in Africa, adding that ARISE-funded studies propose their projects and make a decision about what to do with the money. His colleagues believe that this initiative meets Africa’s study needs. They hope this will eventually help African science thrive and reduce inequalities in studies on the continent. Ogega says that in 2022, around 56 PhD scholars and 70 master’s scholars from across Africa benefited from various ARISEs. “I could see what I would call the true effect of the EU-AU partnership on African scientists,” he says.
Although many EU–AU initiatives have been beneficial, governance and coordination of resources across the African continent can be a challenge. In 2021, major international donors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK government and the UK charity Wellcome pulled millions of dollars from the AAS amid a governance crisis, with some programmes and staff transferring to the SFA Foundation.
The AAS told Nature Index that the implementation of ARISE is overseen through an independent committee composed of representatives from the EU and AU. “This design minimizes ARISE’s exposure to internal and external risks, such as governance issues,” says the AAS. Ogega clarifies that despite “the disruptions that affected part of the AAS painting in 2021, the implementation of ARISE continued uninterrupted. “
The crisis, however, has been a wake-up call for African science. EU-AU scholarships will be documented live and in real-time on a public website, with consequences in case of non-compliance to ensure accountability and transparency, suggests Nadia Sam-Agudu, a pediatrician at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who works at the Nigerian Institute of Human Virology in Abuja.
There are demanding situations beyond the issues such as new clinical organizations and investment for Africa. Sam-Agudu is accustomed to foreign study collaborations and says African scholars face difficulties in building equitable partnerships. Inequality starts with investment, as well as funders in the North who dictate who in the South can participate in funded studies and who gets credit for their work, he says. “This wants to change. We do not blame [the collaborators of the North and the world] for the imbalance of forces and resources. “
The marginalization of African scientists in foreign collaborations has far-reaching implications for the continent.
Agnes Binagwaho, a specialist in emergency paediatrics and Rwanda’s former health minister, says that because of historical colonial power imbalances, research partnerships between global north and African scientists might perpetuate inequalities, including the extraction of knowledge and a brain drain from the continent. “It’s like having a good white master — it’s still slavery,” she says.
Binagwaho is afraid to call for equity in study collaborations between Europe and Africa, and she stands alone: debates in favor of equity have intensified over the past five years.
“Africa will be in a project to generate clinical knowledge for the world,” says Isabella Aboderin, an expert in global disorders of aging who in January 2020 created the Perivoli Africa Research Center at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “But that’s a change I don’t see” in the innovation schedule of the AU and the EU. Aboderin suggests that a first step for Africa might simply be to raise awareness among African scholars and communities that it is up to them to generate wisdom. In July, when the AU-EU timetable was announced, Aboderin was on a plane to Namibia, where she and her colleagues presented a letter on equitable collaborations. “Collaborations in African studies move from local disorders to generating clinical wisdom with global impact,” Aboderin argued at the assembly held in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, attended by several of the main African universities. She highlighted the humanities and social sciences as spaces of basic importance in which Africa can make its mark.
Although Africa is home to about one-fifth of the world’s population, it contributes only 2% of the world’s research output and, in turn, produces only 0. 1% of all patents. One of the objectives of the programme is to achieve tangible impacts: to translate the inventions of EU and AU researchers into products and to ensure their uptake in Europe and Africa. But Aboderin worries that the focus on economic impact and products could just as easily gain advantages in European markets on their own, bringing with it an already asymmetrical landscape and a global market economy. “It’s not really going to replace the imbalance and that’s not what Africa needs,” he says.
Rahman agrees. She urges African governments to prioritize domestic research and development funding. Increasing allocations towards local scientific research and innovation will help rebalance the power dynamic. “That’s what will eventually wean the continent off of relying on European money and a repeat of existing inequities,” says Rahman. Happi adds that, most importantly, African governments should be held accountable to provide matching funds to ensure equity in scientific partnerships between the EU and AU. “If not, then it’s going to be exploitation — I don’t expect much from it,” says Happi.
At the same time, China is deepening scientific links with countries on the continent, including training African scientists and investing in infrastructure. Some researchers welcome China’s approach as more helpful for boosting African science, given it provides access to tangible resources such as scholarships for students to study in Chinese universities. Others worry that both European and Chinese initiatives will make Africa too dependent on outside powers, exposing the continent and its scientists to research imperialism.
Aboderin says that while “research collaboration is good,” the purpose of the UA-EU innovation program is to “rebalance the clinical ecosystem. “
“It’s about positioning the EU in relation to its demanding situations in Africa. “
Nature 624, S10-S12 (2023)
It’s me: https://doi. org/10. 1038/d41586-023-03904-8
This article is part of the North-South Nature Index 2023 collaboration, an independent editorial supplement. Advertisers have no influence on content.
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