For two decades African science has been on a steady upward curve. The figures below — drawn live from the OpenAlex corpus — show a research base that is no longer marginal, but growing, broadening, and increasingly cited. It is exactly this momentum that an African light source would amplify.
A decade of growth
Left: the continent-wide trend. Right: the trajectories of the five most productive nations — rising, and converging.
Where the growth is concentrated
Output today is led by a handful of national systems with deep universities and existing research infrastructure. That concentration is not a weakness to hide but a foundation to build on: these institutions are the natural early adopters and anchor users of a shared light source, while the long tail of emerging producers shows where access would unlock new participation.
The producers
The national systems and the institutions driving the most output.