Phytochemistry- Five Decades of Research in Africa: A Bibliometric Analysis

Phytochemistry is a multi and cross disciplinary research field that deals with chemicals produced by plants, particularly secondary metabolites, their structural compositions, biosynthetic pathways, functions, mechanism of actions and applications. This study used Bibliometric tools to quantitatively achieve a structural overview of research characteristics and potentials of Phytochemistry in Africa within the last five decades (1970 – 2022). A total, 2662 phytochemistry related publications from 822 sources published between 1970 and 2022 were identified in Dimensions database. The publications span 9775 authors, 30 African countries, and 1142 Organizations. Two main research areas found to be linked with the field of phytochemistry are: (1) Ethnopharmacology and (2) Microbiology. The former research area is currently leading the trend in phytochemistry research. Additionally, ‘Journal of Ethnopharmacology’ is the key journal publishing on phytochemistry research, and Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are the most prolific nations in terms scholarly output in Africa. Collaborative research between African countries and hence their organization in multi-authored research was sparse. In terms of research themes, text mining for high- relevance/frequency keywords revealed that “Phenol” (7.3182) and “Flavonoid” (5.3637) were the most cited plant metabolites among all publications. The key noun- phrases for solvents were “Aqueous”, “methanol” and “ethanol”. The most cited terms in plant family were “Tamaricaceae” (4.9575) and “Lamiaceae” (4.9273); plant species, “Acacia nilotica” (4.4909) and “Aloe barbadensis” (4.3946); bacteria strains, “Klebsiella pneumoniae” (4.6932) and “Staphylococcus aureus” (3.3538); fungal species, “Aspergillus” (2.7228) and “Penicillium notatum” (2.4054); Viral strains, “Human immune deficiency virus” (3.3482) and “Hepatitis C virus” (3.2796); parasites, “Plasmodium” (12.0576) and “Leishmania sp (8.3602)”. The most cited methods of detection and analysis of phytochemicals was “Gas chromatography mass spectrometry” (1.7256) and “High performance liquid chromatography” (1.6889). Interactive Site Suitability Models, Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), Plant Organically Bound Tritium (OBT), Quantitative structure–activity relationship models (QSAR models) were the most cited models. Inequality in the geographical distribution of publication output was source of concern. A drive towards computational phytochemistry was detected as an important change in research focus.