Bibliometric analysis on African Urbanization studies: patterns and trends of published articles

ABSTRACT The process of urbanization in Africa is receiving global attention and is subject to comprehensive scientific research due to the wide socioeconomic influence of this continent. Adopting specific search terms and strategies, this paper conducts a statistical analysis of the research articles addressing African urbanization (n = 2046) from the Web of Science core collection. The results show that since 2006, research on African urbanization has entered a stage of rapid development. South Africa and the Global North are the main regions engaged in research on African urbanization. With the application of the bibliometric software HistCite, this paper tries to investigate the research streams and trends contributed by highly cited articles. The main research streams can be divided into 5 areas, with the relationship between disciplines becoming stronger. Population, economy and land-use are the core issues of African urbanization studies, with the largest volume of highly cited articles. Furthermore, the changes in research hotspots were explored based on keyword analysis by CiteSpace. The results indicate that the topics of research hot spots by African and Global North researchers are different, and the Global North has a stronger influence on African urbanization studies.