Science on the continent has a map. Seeing where research is produced — and where it is sparse — is the first step in arguing for infrastructure that serves the whole of Africa rather than a single region.
Output across the continent
Each country shaded by its research volume in the corpus.
Anchors, gaps and momentum
A few national systems carry much of the continent’s output, while large regions remain under-represented — not for lack of talent, but for lack of access to instruments, beamtime and the collaborations that cluster around major facilities. The country × year view shows this is not static: new producers are coming online. A pan-African light source is explicitly a distribution argument — bringing world-class capability within reach of researchers who today must travel abroad to do their best work.
Intensity over time, and the leading institutions
Left: a country-by-year intensity heatmap. Right: Africa’s most productive institutions.