Why is Africa still falling short of its research potential?

Prof. Jeffrey, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at South Africa’s North-West University, says conflict, poverty, corruption and weak education systems are holding back research across the continent. In 2023, sub-Saharan Africa had 88 full-time-equivalent researchers per million people, compared with 4,358 in Europe and Northern America, according to UNESCO. By the end of 2025, only 29 of the 990 individual Nobel Prize and associated economics prize laureates had been born in Africa—about 2.9%, a figure that does not show where their research was conducted. Jeffrey calls for sustained support for African talent and points to the SKA-Mid radio telescope project under construction in South Africa.