The future of academic pubishing in Africa

The Future of Academic Publishing in Africa: Growth or Dependency?

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Academic publishing in Africa is at a fascinating and frightening crossroads. It’s caught between a genuine desire to grow and a deep-seated legacy of dependency. On one hand, African scholars are bursting with ideas, eager to share knowledge relevant to their own continent, and build a research scene that’s truly their own. This is a story of self-determination and progress. On the other hand, the global publishing industry, shaped by a colonial past, has created a system where African research is often funneled through foreign channels. 

This leaves the continent’s intellectual output at the mercy of outsiders. The big question is: will Africa choose a path of authentic growth, fueled by local initiatives and fair partnerships, or will it continue down a road of dependency? This article delves into this dilemma, looking at the promise of open access, the very real threat of predatory journals, and the ongoing fight for intellectual freedom. Real growth can only happen if Africa breaks free from its historical and current dependencies and starts building a system that puts local knowledge and infrastructure first.

The numbers don’t lie. Africa’s share of global publication output recently stands at around 3%, maintaining a steady increase since 2016, with 128,076 scholarly articles published by African academics in 2022. Despite representing about 18% of the world’s population, Africa’s share of global research output is still modest, but shows notable progress compared to earlier decades. And what’s worse, much of this research is still controlled by publishers in the Global North. 

This setup has created what some scholars call “academic dependency,” where the rules of the game are set by someone else, far away. This isn’t just about a lack of papers; it’s about a lack of intellectual control. The challenge is huge, but with new digital tools and the global open access movement, the opportunities are just as big.

The Legacy of Dependency

The roots of academic dependency in Africa go way back to the colonial era. European powers set up universities and research institutions that were basically replicas of their own. Everything from the curriculum to the language of instruction and even the topics considered “important” was imported. 

This model stuck around long after political independence, forcing African universities and scholars to play by Western rules and publish in Western journals to be taken seriously. This has led to a consistent “brain drain,” where many of Africa’s best and brightest minds leave for better-funded jobs and publishing opportunities abroad.

This history created a vicious cycle. Because there weren’t many strong local publishing options and foreign journals had all the prestige, African scholars felt pressured to send their best work overseas. This not only robs local institutions of valuable research but also reinforces the idea that homegrown journals are somehow second-rate. 

The irony is brutal: African universities often have to pay massive subscription fees to access the very research their own scholars produced. It’s like paying rent for your own intellectual property, a kind of modern-day colonialism that enriches a handful of global publishing giants while starving local scholarly communities. The dependency isn’t just about ideas; it’s also about money.

The Open Access Revolution and Its African Promise

The global open access (OA) movement has thrown a wrench into this old model. For Africa, OA isn’t just a cool new trend; it’s a potential game-changer. By making research freely available online, OA journals can completely bypass the high paywalls of Western publishers. 

This means African research can be accessed by African researchers, students, and policymakers without having to pay a dime. This is a revolutionary concept that could truly democratize knowledge and create a fairer, more inclusive global research community.

The open access movement has been gaining serious traction in Africa, though it’s still a work in progress. Initiatives like the African Open Science Platform (AOSP) and university-run repositories are emerging across the continent. For instance, a recent study found over 200 OA repositories on the continent, with Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria leading the charge. 

Platforms like AfricArXiv, a preprint server for African research, are also giving scholars a way to share their work quickly and without the old gatekeepers. These efforts aren’t just about publishing; they’re about building a brand new infrastructure for scholarly communication that’s controlled by Africans, for Africans. They offer a real way out of the dependency trap and a chance to build real, sustainable research ecosystems. It’s a massive step towards intellectual independence.

The Predatory Trap: A New Form of Exploitation

Unfortunately, the rise of open access has also brought a sinister side effect: the explosion of predatory journals, a money-greedy scam. Predatory journals exploit the open access model, charging authors a fee to publish without offering any real peer review, editorial oversight, or proper indexing. They’re a parasite on the academic world, and African scholars are often their most vulnerable victims. With the immense pressure to “publish or perish” and a lack of funding to pay for the pricey fees of legitimate publishers, many researchers end up falling for these fraudulent schemes.

Publishing in a predatory journal is a disaster. It ruins a scholar’s reputation, taints their institution, can lead to the spread of shoddy or even unethical research, and ultimately harms the credibility of African scholarship as a whole. This new form of exploitation is particularly nasty because it pretends to be a solution to the dependency problem. It promises quick publication and “openness,” while really just stealing money and trapping scholars in a worthless system. 

Building Local Capacity and Redefining Success

For African academic publishing to truly flourish, it needs to build its own strong local systems and, more importantly, change how it defines success. For too long, a scholar’s career has been judged by whether they published in a high-impact factor journal, a metric dominated almost exclusively by Western publications. 

This kind of system is designed to keep African scholars on the sidelines. The focus needs to shift from simply publishing in prestigious international journals to building prestigious, high-quality journals within Africa. This means pumping serious money into local university presses and scholarly societies.

The data support this. According to a UNESCO, Africa’s book industry still relies heavily on foreign imports. In 2023, it accounted for about 5.4% of the global publishing market, bringing in roughly US$7 billion. The report projects that with the right policies and investment, this could grow to approximately US$18.5 billion, with educational publishing alone potentially making up to US$13 billion.

A big chunk of that growth could come from strengthening academic publishing. This isn’t just about money; it’s about a change in mindset. African governments, universities, and research councils need to start rewarding scholars for publishing in top-tier African journals. This would not only encourage the growth of local journals but also ensure that research is more relevant and accessible to local communities.

The Role of Inter-African and South-South Collaboration

Another key part of creating a non-dependent future is fostering closer ties between African countries and with other regions in the Global South. For ages, the intellectual traffic has been a one-way street from Africa to the Global North. By building stronger networks across the continent, scholars can create a dynamic, interconnected research community that’s less vulnerable to outside pressure. 

This could mean joint publishing projects, shared research repositories, and collaborative studies that tackle shared continental problems. Moreover, partnerships with publishers and research institutions in regions such as Latin America or Asia can offer a more balanced and equitable model for collaboration. These regions often share similar experiences of academic dependency and can provide insights and solutions that are a better fit for Africa’s needs. 

This kind of “South-South” cooperation can completely bypass the old “North-South” dynamic, creating a new, more balanced global intellectual network. It’s about building a world where intellectual value doesn’t just get extracted in one direction but flows in a vibrant, multi-directional web.

Conclusion

The future of academic publishing in Africa isn’t written in stone. It’s a story being told every day, with each new paper, university policy, and digital platform adding a new chapter. The choice between growth and dependency is a very real one, and it has to be a conscious, collective decision. While the shadow of dependency is long, the rise of digital technology and open access offers powerful new tools to forge a new path.

To achieve real growth, Africa must commit to building its own strong, high-quality publishing infrastructure. It must reject the idea that prestige only comes from Western journals and establish its own standards of excellence. This will require new policies from governments and universities, a firm stance against predatory publishing, and a greater focus on collaboration among African nations and with the Global South. 

The goal isn’t to wall off African scholarship, but to make sure it enters the global conversation on its own terms, with its own voice, and from a platform it controls. This isn’t just about academic pride; it’s a vital step on a continent’s journey toward true self-determination and reaching its full intellectual potential.

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