This study aims at providing some evidence-based insight into Sub-Saharan Africa’s first eighteen months of COVID-19 research by evaluating its research contributions, patterns of collaboration, and funding sources. Eighteen months (2020 January 1-2021 June 30) COVID-19 publication data of 46 Sub-Saharan African countries was collected from Scopus for analysis. Country of affiliation of the authors and funding agencies data was analyzed to understand country contributions, collaboration pattern and funding sources. USA (23.08%) and the UK (19.63%), the top two external contributors, collaborated with Sub-Saharan African countries about three times more than other countries. Collaborative papers between Sub-Saharan African countries - without contributions from outside the region- made up less than five per cent of the sample, whereas over 50% of the papers were written in collaboration with researchers from outside the region. Organizations that are in the USA and the UK funded 45% of all the COVID-19 research from Sub-Saharan Africa. 53.44% of all the funding from Sub-Saharan African countries came from South African organizations. This study provides evidence that pan-African COVID-19 research collaboration is low, perhaps due to poor funding and lack of institutional support within Sub-Saharan Africa. This mirrors the collaborative features of science in Sub-Saharan Africa before the COVID-19 pandemic. The high volume of international collaboration during the pandemic is a good development. There is also a strong need to forge more robust pan-African research collaboration networks, through funding from Africa’s national and regional government organizations, with the specific objective of meeting local COVID-19 and other healthcare needs.

This study aims at providing some evidence-based insight into Sub-Saharan Africa's first eighteen months of COVID-19 research by evaluating its research contributions, patterns of collaboration, and funding sources. Eighteen months (2020 January 1-2021 June 30) COVID-19 publication data of 46 Sub-Saharan African countries was collected from Scopus for analysis. Country of affiliation of the authors and funding agencies data was analyzed to understand country contributions, collaboration pattern and funding sources. USA (23.08%) and the UK (19.63%), the top two external contributors, collaborated with Sub-Saharan African countries about three times more than other countries. Collaborative papers between Sub-Saharan African countries - without contributions from outside the region- made up less than five percent of the sample, whereas over 50% of the papers were written in collaboration with researchers from outside the region. Organizations that are in USA and the UK funded 45% of all the COVID-19 research from Sub-Saharan Africa. 53.44% of all the funding from Sub-Saharan African countries came from South African organizations. This study provides evidence that pan-African COVID-19 research collaboration is low, perhaps due to poor funding and lack of institutional support within Sub-Saharan Africa. This mirrors the collaborative features of science in Sub-Saharan Africa before the COVID-19 pandemic. The high volume of international collaboration during the pandemic is a good development. There is also a strong need to forge more robust pan-African research collaboration networks, through funding from Africa's national and regional government organizations, with the specific objective of meeting local COVID-19 and other healthcare needs.

The response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the science community is unprecedented as indicated by the high number of research publications. Deeper insight into COVID-19 research at regional, and national levels through bibliometric research has revealed different levels of research evolution, depth, contribution, and collaboration patterns. Such reliable and evidence-based information is important for health research planning and policy making. This study aims at providing some evidence-based insight into Sub-Saharan Africa’s preliminary COVID-19 research by evaluating its research contributions, patterns of collaboration, and funding sources. COVID-19 publication data from all the 41 Sub-Saharan African countries was collected from Scopus for analysis. Results show that Sub-Saharan Africa contributed about two percent to global COVID-19 research. South Africa contributed 50.95% of all the COVID-19 publications from Sub-Saharan Africa while USA (28.48%) and the UK (24.47%), the top two external contributors, collaborated with Sub-Saharan African countries three times more than other countries. Collaborative papers between Sub-Saharan African countries - without contributions from outside the region- made up less than five percent of the sample, whereas over 50% of the papers were written in collaboration with researchers from outside the region. Organizations based in USA, UK, and EU funded more than 60% of all the COVID-19 research from Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 60% of all the funding from Sub-Saharan African countries came from South African organizations. This study provides evidence that pan-African COVID-19 research collaboration is low, perhaps due to poor funding and institutional support within Africa. There is a need to forge stronger pan-African research collaboration networks, through funding from Africa’s national and regional government organizations, with the specific objective of meeting COVID-19 healthcare needs of Africans.