The wait is nearly over for Africa鈥檚 scientists. Very soon, they won鈥檛 have to rely on collaboration with Western academics and institutions to get work published in a high-profile journal.
The first edition of , the continent鈥檚 new 鈥渕ega-journal鈥�, is due in September. It could be a game changer. Lack of exposure in prominent Western scientific journals represents a catch-22 for many African scientists. Without it, funding can be harder to come by, and their work can suffer and become less publishable.
A generation ago, sub-Saharan Africa鈥檚 share of the world鈥檚 scientific papers was 1 per cent, but by 1996 it had dropped to about 0.7 per cent, where it remained for almost a decade with no sign of recovery, according to Robert Tijssen at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
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Scientific African will give welcome added exposure to research into regional challenges that might not be prominent on a Western agenda: malnutrition, armed conflict, global climate change adaptation, unproductive agriculture, declining fish stocks, and haemorrhagic disease.
Career boost
The new journal will, of course, publish on broader topics. South Africa is co-host of the Square Kilometer Array, an international effort to build the world鈥檚 largest radio telescope. Robotics engineer Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, a Ghanaian-born NASA scientist who worked on the robotic spacecraft that found water on Mars, has established the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation.
But the hope is that work that has remained in the shadows will get showcased, aiding African research careers. Academics who publish more stand a greater chance of getting promotions and winning grants. This could rebalance partnerships. As it stands, scientific collaboration is skewed towards Western nations, who have largely conceptualised and designed projects without much, if any, input from African colleagues.
That would bring us closer to the idea of local solutions to local challenges, as championed by , an economist at New York University. He sees that approach as a more realistic and effective way for poorer nations to achieve prosperity than the grand schemes of the West that, by and large, have failed to deliver hoped for socio-economic benefits.
It won鈥檛 happen overnight, but publication of Scientific African will be an important moment, one with an outsize impact.
