By Nneka Nwogwugwu
African researchers have blamed Bias over failure to produce scientific innovations in Africa.
Ambi Ahmad Adamu, a 46-year-old biochemist who lives in Bauchi, Nigeria narrated his experience of being severally rejected by international journals.
Ambi is researched on how to detoxify water that’s polluted by chromium 6, a carcinogenic chemical commonly found in industrial waste. Detoxification methods in use are expensive or take their own toll on the environment.
To avoid these side effects, Ambi used a plant called Hibiscus sabdariffa, a species of Hibiscus native to parts of Africa and India and used to make a local drink in Nigeria called “sobo.” When the plant is processed, waste matter is usually thrown out. Ambi and his team tried to extract antioxidants to use in water detoxification.
Despite the obstacles – he had to make a 5-hour drive from his home to Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria to conduct his research – he says he found success. In 15 minutes, the antioxidants from the Hibiscus waste reduced the concentration of chromium 6 in water by 72%. “Turning waste to wealth” is how Ambi describes the process.
But he didn’t find success when he tried to publish his results. Starting in 2018, Ambi submitted a paper on his project to various scientific journals. And then came the noes.
It wasn’t the rejections alone that frustrated Ambi. It was the lack of any explanation – or suggestions for improving his paper.
Researchers often find themselves getting rejections with no feedback. That’s the way many journals work. But researchers in Africa believe they face an additional hurdle: prejudice within the scientific community about the caliber of research on the continent.
Also, Abraham Haileamlak, a professor of pediatric cardiology at Jimma University in Ethiopia and editor-in-chief of the Ethiopian Journal of Health and Sciences, says he has experienced this prejudice firsthand.
He says when he shares his studies on children’s health and rheumatic heart disease with journals in wealthy countries, “they say they do not expect such quality research from a low-income country.”
A couple of studies by Dr. Matthew Harris, a public health lecturer at Imperial College London, offer evidence of this prejudice. In one of the few studies on the topic, in Globalization and Health, 58% of respondents – mostly American health-care professionals and researchers – did not think that poor countries could likely produce research of the same caliber as rich countries.
Another Harris study, published in Health Affairs, showed identical abstracts of research papers to English medical professionals, months apart, but would change the country of origin. Abstracts linked to high-income countries were regarded more highly.
However, there’s a new journal whose mission is to tackle this prejudice. Scientific African launched in 2018 to provide a prejudice-free platform for research from Africa.
Two staffers at Elsevier, an academic publishing company in the Netherlands, came up with the idea a few years earlier: EJ Van Lanen, the food science senior publisher, and Marc Chahin, the executive publisher in the physics department.