India's Research Collaboration Trend with the Selected African Countries: An Exploratory Study

Historically India has had cordial relationships with the African countries. So, the aim of the present study is to find out the collaboration status and research emphasis of the leading five African countries with India as reflected in the Scopus database for the last three decades. In the context of India's collaborative research scenario, the five leading African countries are South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya. The African countries contribute a total 14,053 co-authored articles which may be further categorized on the basis of different aspects like country wise contribution, chronological output, nature of collaboration, focus areas, leading co-authoring foreign countries, leading affiliations, source journals, most prolific affiliations and scholarly impact. India has the strongest collaborative relationships with the countries of the Northern Africa region. The developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany have been found as the most influential collaborating partners. Conversely, the collaboration scenario confirms the fact that 'Physics and Astronomy', 'Medicine' and 'Engineering' are the primary emphasized areas among African countries.