Science on the dark continent

As we’ve seen, the causes of the pathetic state of African (specifically, black-African) science are not being discussed honestly, even in Nature (it and Science are the 2 premiere scientific journals).  John Doe made the comment that African science is equivalent to Dutch science.  Presumably, he was referring to the results published in Thomson Reuters’ Global Research Report: Africa, April 2010, which provides some insight into the state of science on the dark continent.

Here are some of the key findings:

For the years 1999 to 2008, the central region of Africa produced the smallest quantity of papers, roughly 7,100 per year, despite being the region with the greatest number of countries: more than 30. The north region actually accounted for the highest number of papers in recent years, with more than 10,500 in 2008, even though the region consists of only six countries. Similarly, the south region, although made up of only 14 countries, also produced more than 10,000 papers. This immediately points to an uneven distribution of research and innovative capacity at both country and regional levels.

For scale, it should be appreciated that the total of about 27,000 papers per year is about the same volume of published output as The Netherlands.

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/africanationsbyregion.jpg[/IMG]

[it looks like the scale on the y-axis is off by an order of magnitude]

A breakdown of these figures demonstrates the extent to which each region — and African science as a whole — is dominated by three nations: Egypt [population 83 million] in the north, Nigeria [population 149 million] in the middle, and South Africa [population 49 million, ~5 million of which are whites] in the south. In the ten years between 1999 and 2008, for example, Egypt produced nearly 30,000 papers which was about three times the total for Tunisia [population ~ 10 million], its next-place and regional neighbor. In west-central Africa, Nigeria’s total for the same period was over 10,000, compared to roughly 6,500 for Kenya [population 39 million] which is the leading research economy in the east of the continent. South Africa’s dominance, as might be expected, is even more pronounced: nearly 47,000 papers during 1999-2008, compared to the southern region’s next-most-prolific nation, Tanzania [population 41 million], which fielded just over 3,000.

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/pubsbycountry.jpg[/IMG]

Here is the breakdown by GDP:

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/pubsbyGDPbycountry.jpg[/IMG]

Yes, that green country in the south is

Rhodesia

Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is relatively the most productive country but this is anomalous because it retains its legacy research base despite a collapsing economy and very low current GDP.

I suspect that much of Malawi’s (the other green country in the south) relative success is also due to outside factors (the authors also mention that 45% of Malawi’s publications include UK-based authors).

Here is a graphic showing the collaborations network:

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/africansciencenetwork.jpg[/IMG]

There is a marked interaction between the countries in North Africa which share both language and culture and are also relatively prolific across the fields analyzed in Table 1. Thus this network is probably the strongest group overall since it links countries which are individually research active across multiple fields. The group does little research with the rest of Africa, however, other than through the Egypt-South Africa link.

In the more maths-intensive sciences, virtually all the top 5 positions are occupied by South Africa or one of the non-black African countries:

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/africantopfives.jpg[/IMG]

Collaborations with former colonial powers are important for some countries:

[IMG]http://i760.photobucket.com/albums/xx249/Aletheia14/africancollaborations.jpg[/IMG]

It would have been interesting to see how the numbers would be affected if cutoffs were applied based on journal impact factors.  I suspect that the disparities would become even starker.  The authors of the report suggest this, although they don’t provide any precise numbers:

South Africa is the outstanding research leader in the region, has by far the greatest research output of any country, well ahead of Egypt in second place, and has high impact for much of its research. Indeed, its capacity and diversity stimulates a comprehensive and diverse portfolio which supports both peaks and platforms in its research base. By comparison, it is only the peak of other countries’ research activity that emerges into the international literature.

The sorry state of black-African science is not suprising, or even especially newsworthy.  What is more interesting is the obfuscation that goes on when this is discussed by mainstream media, or even elite scientific journals like Nature.  The authors of this report also avoided discussion of innate intelligence as a factor (in fact, they say that the “African diaspora provides powerful intellectual input to the research achievements of other countries”- I’d sure like to see their evidence for this claim).  Negroes are perhaps the weakest link in the egalitarian religion (which is why ‘nigger’ has become such a powerful word).  Nationalists and racialists are used to being the ones who discuss these things honestly.  What will happen when the (scientific) mainstream acknowledges what we’ve long known?

Posted by Dasein on Sunday, July 11, 2010 at 07:57 AM in
Comments (1) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Next entry: Childhood malaria is overdiagnosed in Africa

Previous entry: Niall Ferguson suggests we make brainwashing fun