According to an analysis published on Tuesday, just 4% of scientific research on COVID-19 is pertinent to Africa, despite it contains one fifth of the world population. The continent has reached around four million confirmed cases, and the authors of the study have said that the comparative lack of research on the continent, authored by Africans added to the growing number of evidence of coloniality in global healthcare research and decision making.

More than 2,000 peer-reviewed articles were analysed by the researchers which got published in the 10 leading health and medical journals from January 1 and September 30, 2020. Just 94 articles out of 2,196 (around 4%) has content specifically related to Africa or specific African country, the analysis found.

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In the articles relevant to the developing continent, just 210 out 619 listed authors were African, which is around 34%. It means that two third of the authors of COVID-19 research related to the mainland were non-African, compared to African authors making up to 3% of authors of non-African focused research.

In an online journal BMJ Global Health, the authors of the analysis said that the results were not shocking at all, given that African authors have historically been 

The authors of the analysis, published in the online journal BMJ Global Health, said the results were not surprising given how African authors have historically been insufficiently represented across scientific research.

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“Health policy is not only informed by original research; sensible, contextually appropriate guidelines, opinions and commentary are also essential to improving the functioning of healthcare systems,” they wrote.

“African voices and research are needed to guide the local pandemic response,” they concluded.

The authors called on policymakers to raise funding for research, especially in the field of infectious diseases, and said that scientific journals have a role to play in ensuring that their findings are more reflective of the global community.

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“The time has come that authoritative journals need to turn to authors and ask where local representation is on papers describing health systems in regions that are not there own,” they wrote.

A separate analysis found that African countries produced three percent of the global share of Covid-19 publications during this period. Almost two thirds of these came from just three countries: South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria.