Abstract:
Africa contributes little to the biomedical
literature despite its high burden of infectious diseases.
Global health research partnerships aimed at addressing
Africa-endemic disease may be polarised. Therefore,
we assessed the contribution of researchers in Africa to
research on six infectious diseases.
Methods We reviewed publications on HIV and malaria
(2013–2016), tuberculosis (2014–2016), salmonellosis,
Ebola haemorrhagic fever and Buruli ulcer disease (1980–
2016) conducted in Africa and indexed in the PubMed
database using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic
Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol. Papers reporting
original research done in Africa with at least one laboratory
test performed on biological samples were included. We
studied African author proportion and placement per study
type, disease, funding, study country and lingua franca.
Results We included 1182 of 2871 retrieved articles that
met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 1109 (93.2%) had at
least one Africa-based author, 552 (49.8%) had an African
first author and 41.3% (n=458) an African last author.
Papers on salmonellosis and tuberculosis had a higher
proportion of African last authors (p<0.001) compared with
the other diseases. Most of African first and last authors
had an affiliation from an Anglophone country. HIV, malaria,
tuberculosis and Ebola had the most extramurally funded
studies (≥70%), but less than 10% of the acknowledged
funding was from an African funder.
Conclusion African researchers are under-represented in
first and last authorship positions in papers published from
research done in Africa. This calls for greater investment
in capacity building and equitable research partnerships at
every level of the global health community
