Africa’s Scholarly Publishing Ecosystem: Fragmentation, Challenges, and Opportunities for Growth

Abstract

This study examined how revenue arrangements, institutional support, and indexing practices shape the sustainability and international visibility of scholarly journals in selected African publishing environments. Existing accounts describe a publishing ecosystem characterised by uneven infrastructure, fragmented markets, constrained institutional funding, and unequal inclusion in international indexing services; however, the evidence is not always reported using comparable definitions or units of analysis. The study uses a qualitative descriptive approach to secondary documentary analysis, comparing published reports, journal and platform information, and research literature concerning South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and Tunisia. The study is thematically organised around revenue models, institutional frameworks, digital infrastructure, and indexing and visibility. The study findings reveal a diverse ecosystem in which article processing charges, institutional support, subscriptions, and donor funding coexist, while the scale and sustainability of these arrangements vary across settings. The analysis also shows that journal visibility cannot be inferred from platform presence alone: directory inclusion, metadata registration, and selective indexing each offer distinct forms of discoverability. The study concludes that sustainable growth requires coordinated investment in locally responsive publishing infrastructure, transparent financing, editorial capacity, interoperable metadata, and regional collaboration. The study is significant because it reframes African scholarly publishing not simply as a visibility problem but as an interconnected question of financing, governance, infrastructure, and equitable participation in global knowledge exchange.