From barriers to breakthroughs: Africa’s scientific journey

African scientists are overcoming systemic hurdles to strengthen research capacity on the continent, demonstrating that Africa can fashion its own answers to the environmental and conservation challenges it faces.

When Dr Mohammed Armani returned to Ghana in 2021 to set up a conservation lab, the university gave him an office, a desk, and a chair — and little else. No lab space, no equipment, not even access to the ecological data he needed. To study Ghana’s savannas, he found himself waiting months for reports to arrive from the IUCN library in Switzerland.

“The biggest issue has been a lack of research funding,” says Armani.

His frustration is shared across the continent. In South Africa, postdoctoral researcher Dr Andrea Webster describes the insecurity of building a career on short-term contracts while watching global policy debates unfold without African voices in the room. “Living in a space of financial insecurity can be exhausting,” she says. “It takes a lot of focus away from the work that you can actually meaningfully do.”

For Zimbabwean conservationist Merlyn Nkomo, the problem runs even deeper. She argues that Africa’s researchers are still trapped in a colonial legacy that treats the continent as a site of extraction — even of its own scientists. “We must decolonise knowledge that positions European and American thinking as the universal standard of thought,” says Nkomo. “It’s time to invest in African institutions, elevate our journals, and build Pan-African networks that treat Africa as a place of solutions, not just problems.”

These are among the perspectives that will take centre stage at this week’s 14th Oppenheimer Research Conference, in Midrand, from 15 to 17 October. The conference aims to showcase Africa-led research and amplify the voices of the continent’s scientists.

A recent Tipping Points webinar, organised by Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC), set the tone for this week’s discussions.

Reclaiming knowledge

The webinar laid bare the systemic roadblocks confronting African researchers — from underfunded labs and scarce data to exclusion from global policy debates. While these challenges may be immense, the panellists agreed that the future wasn’t bleak. Africa’s abundance of unasked questions ensures that its scientific journey is far from over.

Charting the way forward

For Armani, who will speak at the conference on the topic, “Future Ecosystems for Africa: Lessons, impact and the path forward”, the lack of infrastructure is only the beginning of the challenge.

“In Ghana, we don’t have any national funding agency or seed grant for aspiring researchers to start a lab. You mostly have to rely on applying for external grants — and those are small and extremely competitive.”

And he discovered, “a bit too late”, that being a man over 35 disqualified him from many early-career funding calls — a bias, he says, which highlights how research support systems often fail to fit African realities. The experience, he added, can sap the momentum and excitement that young scientists need to stay the course.

The shortage of funding, in turn, drives talent out of the system. Armani said he loses “really good students” each year as they leave to pursue opportunities abroad. Low university salaries force many lecturers to take on consultancies or extra jobs to stay afloat.

Even when projects attract support, they often have to bend toward the interests of external funders. “You have to shift your research focus to align with what external funders and your collaborators are interested in,” he said. “That means the questions may not always be relevant to the local context, or answer Africa’s own data needs.”

Push back

Despite these constraints, Armani has been finding ways to push back. Through collaborations with the Future Ecosystems for Africa (FEFA) programme, Yale University, and partners in Italy, he’s working to influence research agendas from within. “I try to work with a mix of collaborators — some who let me define the direction, others whose projects I support to keep the lab running,” he said.

He’s also begun partnering with NGOs, which he describes as “very well-funded”, yet often are sitting on “data that’s never published”. By accessing and reanalysing these reports, Armani hopes to build more complete ecological datasets for Ghana.

Teaching, too, has become part of his strategy. “I train students to mine data from open platforms like Global Forest Watch and FEFA databases,” he said. Over time, their cumulative projects — rotated across different sites and seasons — are beginning to generate valuable, student-led datasets.

Armani admits these steps may not yet amount to the “grand transformative science” he envisions. But they are helping to build capacity, fill data gaps, and, slowly, strengthen Africa’s role in producing its own ecological knowledge.

Early career blues

Webster expanded on the day-to-day uncertainty facing early-career scientists in South Africa. That insecurity, she said, limits opportunities to build the international connections needed for recognition. “It removes opportunities for networking,” she said — especially for those unable to afford conference travel or pay publication fees.

The result, Webster said, is that African expertise is often absent where it matters most. “I was really surprised,” she said, “when I worked on a UN and WHO report and found that the authors for the report were all from developed countries.”

She also described the difficulty of finding local expertise in her specialised field: “I’m hearing of lots of people, but I can’t find them. I can’t find their work.”

On the personal qualities required to survive in this environment, Webster said: “Resilience is probably the most important thing. It’s not really about how clever you are, it’s about how much you can put up with, and how far you’re prepared to go to get what you need done.”

Foreign idols

Nkomo, a PhD candidate at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, said there was much to be learned from the African experience. “Our human resource — our ideas, our leadership, our skills — is being lost to the rest of the world,” she said.

She added that part of the problem lies in how narratives about conservation are framed. “We need to catch up to propaganda,” she said. “When people think of great conservationists, they think of Sir David Attenborough — who is really unrelatable to a lot of Africans.”

To change this, Nkomo said, African scientists and storytellers must be elevated. “We have our own African gorilla researchers,” she said, “but we’re not elevating their opinions.”

Nkomo said she had once aspired to a global research career, but her perspective had shifted. “I personally changed my mind on trying to enter the global stage,” she said, “because there’s just so much work to do in Africa — so many questions, so many urgent problems to solve.”

Owning the story

African researchers, she said, must ask the questions and define the answers, proving that Africa is a place of creation, not just of challenges. “Who we are is but the stories we continually tell ourselves.”

Armani urged emerging African scientists to learn to “ride that wave” of difficulties until they achieved significant impact. Webster agreed, also stressing that researchers needed to “shout smarter” rather than louder.

The panellists agreed that despite the systemic hurdles, underfunded labs, and exclusion from global debates, Africa remained a continent rich in unasked questions — and scientists determined to answer them, even when the world isn’t listening.

The next Tipping Points webinar takes place at the Oppenheimer Research Conference on Wednesday, 15 October. It features a ministerial panel comprising Botswana’s minister of minerals and energy, Bogolo Kenewendo, Zambian tourism minister, Dr Rodney Sikumba, Sierra Leone’s minister of environment and climate, Jiwoh Abdulai, and the Zimbabwean minister of environment, climate and wildlife, Dr Evelyn Ndlovu.

The core purpose of the session is to address the gap between global environmental funding needs and actual financial commitments – a crucial challenge for researchers and governments in Africa regarding how to achieve long-term funding for important projects.

The Oppenheimer Research Conference 2025 will be live streamed. Click here to register. Click here to download the programme.

• This story was produced with support from Jive Media Africa, science communication partner to Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation (OGRC).