Fourth Industrial Revolution Research Outputs in Africa: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

The world is currently transitioning through the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. 4IR research outputs are growing exponentially. Although African governments have been promoting fourth industrial revolution research and making initiatives to leverage it, these research outputs have not been analyzed. There is a dearth of publications that provide an up-to-date overview and a knowledge mapping analysis of 4IR literature in Africa. For this study, a bibliometric analysis of 912 scholarly papers published in Web of Science (WoS) core collection was conducted to reflect the research trends, 4IR themes, and gaps in 4IR publications in Africa. VOSviewer software was used to analyze the data. The results indicate that there has been a gradual growth in 4IR publications in Africa with a peak of 227 publications in 2021 according to the WoS database. South Africa is the most contributing and collaborative country, with most publications produced by the University of Johannesburg. The results suggest limited collaborations among African institutions and authors in this field. The 4IR research hotspots as revealed by keywords co-occurrences in Africa include machine learning, cloud computing, remote sensing, big data, and internet of things mainly for predictions and classification. The areas that may have received the least research focus include smart cities, block-chain, ecosystem service, policy, health care, and precision agriculture. By highlighting the research trends and gaps in 4IR literature in Africa, this study suggests possible directions for future 4IR research.