The State of Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa: Trends, Progress and Limitations

Abstract

This STS Special Issue revisits the question of the State of Science, Technology & Innovation (STI) in Africa today and its evolution since the publication of the First STS Special Issue on the subject in 2003 ( Science, Technology and Society, Vol. 8, issue 2, 2003). The six contributions to this issue address the ‘state’ of Africa STI in different, but complementary, ways. Three papers (Michael Kahn; Rigas Arvanitis, Johann Mouton and Adeline Néron; and Robert Tijssen and Jos Winnink) take on this challenge mostly through quantitative approaches using indicator-based evidence through ‘continent’ wide analyses. The three other papers (Agnes Lutomiah, Jaco P. Blanckenberg and Stefan Skupien; Nelius Boshoff and Similo Ngwenya; and Sanaa Zebakh et al.) present their analyses through country (Kenya and Zimbabwe) or regional (three Maghreb countries) case studies. But the individual papers in the issue are not only differentiated in terms of the quantitative–qualitative spec-trum, substantive issues around trends in the funding of science in Africa, patterns and trends in research collaboration and changes in the role of the institutions of scientific research, and especially the growing importance of (research) universities in the production of knowledge on the continent. The individual papers are rich in evidence and data despite the continuing constraints on the availability of accurate and robust STI data about the majority of the science systems in Africa. But, in addition to presenting and discussing on the implications of the evidence from recent bibliometric and scientometric data, some papers also venture into more theoretical and conceptual Tijssen proposes a distinction between global and the of research the the the colleagues