1 Introduction
At the 2016 G20 Hangzhou Summit, China placed development at the center of the G20’s macroeconomic policy coordination for the first time, and the Summit adopted the G20 Action Plan on the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the G20 Initiative on Supporting Industrialization in Africa and Least Developed Countries. At the recent 19th G20 Summit in Brazil in November 2024
[1], China’s representative reiterated the need to ‘…support developing countries in adopting sustainable production and lifestyle, properly responding to challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution, enhancing ecological conservation, and achieving harmony between man and nature…’. A strong strand of China’s speech concerned Africa, announcing actions on advancing modernization over the next three years with a Chinese commitment of RMB360 billion yuan in financial support. In addition, China announced-alongside Brazil, South Africa, and the African Union - an initiative on International Cooperation in Open Science to help the Global South gain better access to global advances in science, technology, and innovation.
In this article, we examine the potential role of geoscience research and practice in the sustainable use of natural resources, the prevention of climate change impacts, as well as mitigation of geo-hazards and their health implications, indicating the areas where China’s geoscience for Africa is strong and where it requires more effort.
2 Africa background
A recent article by the Gates Foundation
[2] provides a shocking statistic: that a greater proportion of the world’s poor people live in Africa than ever before. Now, 60% of the world’s poor people live in Africa, an increase of 20% from 2010. Africa’s population is growing at a rate of over 2.3% per year, which is the highest rate of growth among the continents. Its economy is also predicted to grow rapidly, driven by various factors, including its large natural resources, such as gas and oil, as well as minerals, such as diamonds, and its rapidly growing population. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
[3] predicts that nine of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies in 2024 will be in Africa.
Given that Africa’s population and economy are set to grow, geoscience research, knowledge, and application are vital for the sustainable use of its natural resources and for resilience and preparedness in the face of climate change - for its citizens, institutions, investors, and natural environment.
It is well known that geoscience has a direct role in natural resource development, including in establishing the geographical distribution, geological habitat, geotechnical feasibility, and environmental sustainability of minerals and geological energy resources
[4]. All these resources are directly related to economic growth, poverty alleviation
[5], and improvements in the Human Development Index
[6]. Industrial growth produces trickle-down effects in countries with well-run institutions and civil society. Countries that can use their geological natural resources sustainably and understand their value can attract investment and use the income for better schooling, health care systems, nutrition, roads, and infrastructure - and many other sectors. In post-conflict countries, natural resources are particularly valuable in kickstarting healthy economies
[7].
Geoscience is also important for understanding resilience and preparedness in the face of climate change and other natural hazards. The African continent has been warming at a slightly faster rate than the global average, at about +0.3 °C per decade between 1991 and 2023. The warming has been most rapid in North Africa, around +0.4 °C per decade between 1991 and 2023, compared to +0.2 °C/decade between 1961 and 1990. Africa also faces a disproportionate burden from climate change and adaptation costs
[8]. Critical areas of resilience research include groundwater
[9], coastal flooding
[10], drought, and agro minerals in soil nutrient enhancement, affecting food security and poverty
[11-12].
3 State of research overall
Geoscience knowledge and application are a result of research, which can be well represented by the number of papers, authorship of papers, and funding for associated research, as well as other more sophisticated methods of bibliometric analysis.
In this section we present a set of bibliometric analyses that reveal the general profile of Africa’s home-grown science and science undertaken on Africa by primarily non-African scientists (
Fig.1).
This study analyzed geoscientific research on Africa from 2014 to 2023 using data from the SCIE database, employing a “Citation Topics” system to categorize research areas and defining leadership based on the geographical affiliation of the first or corresponding author.
Africa-led(‘home-grown’) and non-Africa-led geoscience are dominated by foundational subjects such as geochemistry, geophysics and general geology. The non-Africa-led geoscience area has a strong archaeological and paleontological focus, probably reflecting the worldwide strength of interest in Africa as the origin of the genus Homo and Homo sapiens. That the home-grown science of this type is not as strong perhaps reflects the lower importance of this research to African well-being and economic development. The strength of oceanography, meteorology and atmospheric sciences perhaps reflects the importance of this research both in understanding the effects of climate change (the meteorological aspects) and the resilience aspects of climate change (e.g. groundwater), but the category does not allow the detailed character of research to be discerned.
Of note in general, however, is that there is almost double the amount of non-African-led geoscience research on Africa compared with home-grown African research. Encouraging home-grown research might be a complex task and difficult objective to achieve. However, it is possible if the following are considered: (1) fostering relationships between research-active countries and African countries, (2) prioritizing support for capacity building in African institutions to avoid ‘brain drain’, (3) develop laboratories equipped with the necessary infrastructure and instruments for various geoscientific analysis locally on the continent, (4) development of online and virtual tools for African geoscientists, including access to up-to-date published research, and access to AI-aided platforms.
Progress is already being made with (4) through the Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) online computing platform and its artificial intelligence tool GeoGPT. These are being developed with strong China funding support for free and wide global access, with a particular focus on Africa. These advanced tools will help to place the agency of development squarely in the hands of African scientists and institutions. The DDE platform (
https://deep-time.org/) enables individual scientists, research groups and others to build their own models, upload and download data, and create excellent visuals and images. GeoGPT is an open-source, non-profit Large Language Model (LLM), entirely for geosciences, developed by DDE in collaboration with Zhejiang Laboratory in China. GeoGPT can extract key information from geoscience documents, develop computer code, and draw charts and graphs from text. GeoGPT provides Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) so that sources of answers can be traced to single articles and papers. Its rollout in Africa should positively impact data and knowledge availability, contributing to some of China’s recently announced goals in Open Science to help the Global South gain better access to global advances in science, technology and innovation.
Examples of how these DDE tools are already being used in Africa include the development of new environment and resource maps in Nigeria using the DDE Platform, including using open source air quality data to perform modeling and prediction of particulate matter (PM2.5) readings; and using GeoGPT to enable text-based interactions for map generation, thereby reducing the need for specialized knowledge. African researchers have found that LLMs can quickly translate natural language prompts into executable mapping actions, allowing geoscientists to focus on their core research.
4 China’s research in and on Africa
China-led geoscience research on Africa is proportionately small compared with its position as the world’s leading country in published science research (the total number of publications in geoscience research on Africa is 24201, of which only 2407 are China-led) as shown by
Fig.2. This reveals a similar profile to international-led research in Africa (
Fig.1b), in that foundational work on geology dominates, followed by oceanography and meteorology. Archaeology again has a strong representation in China-led science in Africa, probably for the reason discussed above, related to the origins of
Homo and
Homo sapiens.
Within the category of‘geochemistry, geophysics and geology’, the profile of a total of 809 papers reveals a mixed portfolio of science with strong representation from papers on geochemistry, tectonics, turbidity currents and stromatolites (
Fig.3).
In general
Figs. 2 and
3 indicate a China-led research profile that is not particularly focused on the priority needs of development in Africa. Although there is a strong representation of meteorology, which could contribute to understanding how climate change might unfold in Africa, and environmental science, which might have an element of climate resilience and mitigation, there is no sign of a coordinated China-led effort to develop climate change resilience and mitigation, one of Africa’s major challenges. Such an effort could include studies of African groundwater sustainability and recharge, surface water flooding and management, vulnerability of infrastructure to climate change, and past (Quaternary) and future climate change in Africa. Archaeology is perhaps overrepresented given the small value it has in understanding climate change, sustainable resource development or economic development.
The breakdown of the geochemistry, geophysics and geology category in
Fig.3 also reveals research that is of general rather than strategic interest, for example research on stromatolites, which bears on the early history of the earth and the development of the oxygen rich atmosphere, but has little bearing on Africa’s priorities.
Amongst the priorities for geoscience research in Africa, which are not addressed by the research conducted so far, as shown in
Figs 2 and
3, are sustainable mineral and hydrocarbon development, hydrology and hydrogeology, climate change and resilience, natural hazards, medical geology, and geoscience education and training. A particular opportunity for African nations is the presence of critical minerals - minerals needed for the energy transition and for batteries for electric cars in particular
[13-14]. Africa is well-endowed with many of these critical materials, such as rare earth elements and platinum group metals. Several research groups stress the need for the agency on the part of African institutions to map out these valuable resources, understand their value and the economics and sustainability of their extraction, encourage local business, attract investment, and scrutinize proposals from potential international investors to get the best deals. However, China’s African research profile in this area appears weak, un-strategic, and uncoordinated. We therefore recommend a strategic funding initiative for China-led critical metals research in Africa involving effective and equitable collaboration with African geoscientists, perhaps based on the genesis of key metals, as well as the sustainability of their mining.
5 Conclusions
China is the world’s leading publisher of scientific papers. According to Digital Science’s Dimensions database, last year, there were almost 830000 papers featuring researchers based in China, representing around 15% of the world’s 5.4 million articles. However, China’s contribution to geoscience in Africa, although not insubstantial, is not consistent with Africa’s geoscience research priorities and relevance. Based on these conclusions, the following are recommended:
A more coordinated and strategic approach to China-led geoscience research in Africa, taking into account the geoscience research priorities of Africa, including:
(1)In the future, China-Africa geoscience cooperation should continue to deepen collaboration in geological exploration and mineral resources development. Both parties can enhance their capabilities and proficiency in geological exploration, mineral resource assessment, and related fields by strengthening technical exchanges and cooperative research.
(2)China-Africa geoscience cooperation should also strengthen collaboration in environmental protection and the impact of the geo-environment factors and material on health through research in the field of medical geology and disaster prevention. This would include environmental monitoring and disaster warning systems and promoting sustainable mining practices. China and Africa share common issues in these fields, hence, joint research programs can be of mutual benefit.
(3)China-Africa geoscience cooperation should further expand channels for talent cultivation and international exchanges. By organizing academic conferences, training workshops, and other activities, both parties can strengthen talent exchanges and cooperation in geological exploration, mineral resources development, environmental protection, and other fields.
Continue to support international initiatives that seek to increase the agency and capacity of African geoscience research, and Open Science, such as the DDE
[15⇓-17] and GeoGPT AI platforms.
深时数字地球国际大科学计划DDE Scholar Report实施开发项目(HT202206LOz47)
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