Mapping the state of the field of social psychology in Africa and patterns of collaboration between African and international social psychologists

Patterns of collaboration in social psychology from 2000 to 2010 were mapped to analyse the position of African authors in the international co-authorship network using bibliographic records from the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. There are very few social psychologists working in Africa, with the majority of these located in South Africa. Indeed, some small European countries boast more social psychologists than the entire continent of Africa. African authors published less than their non-African collaborators, but had comparable status on joint publications. Co-authorship relationships between African researchers from different African countries were generally mediated by partners from other continents, and direct collaboration between non-compatriot African authors was very rare. The small size, and extremely sparse connection of the African co-authorship network, is likely to be an obstacle both in the development of social psychology as a universally relevant discipline and in the penetration of social psychological knowledge in Africa.