EU-Africa partnerships in health research from 2014 to 2023: Outputs and lessons learnt

The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) supports clinical research partnerships between countries in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. A bibliometric analysis of outputs from the second EDCTP program, EDCTP2, was undertaken to assess its contribution to international collaboration, advancement of scientific knowledge and policy uptake.

1429 papers acknowledging EDCTP2 support published between 2014 and the end of 2023 were compared with all publications within the scope of EDCTP2 and with subsets acknowledging other funders.

86.3% of EDCTP2 publications included at least one author from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and 62% included authors from both European and SSA countries. SSA researchers were first or last authors on 71% of EDCTP2 papers and women researchers from SSA were lead authors on 33% of EDCTP2 papers. Collaborations across several European-African and African-African country pairs were over-represented in EDCTP2 outputs. EDCTP2 papers were more likely than those from other funders to focus on the affordability and accessibility of medical interventions and on populations with unmet medical needs typically excluded from clinical studies, such as children, pregnant women and people with co-infections and co-morbidities. We corroborated that EDCTP publications were influencing policy.

Although the findings reflect outputs part-way through the EDCTP2 program, they provide encouraging signs that the EDCTP2 program is meeting its objectives on promoting international collaboration, widening access to interventions, and delivering public health benefits to populations in sub-Saharan Africa.

This work was supported by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the EDCTP2 program, supported by the European Union.