For decades, African scholars have produced groundbreaking research on disease, climate, culture, and governance, yet much of that knowledge has struggled to travel beyond lecture halls and conference rooms.
Too often, the problem has not been ideas. It has been a difficult journey from research to publication. At Makerere University, that gap was laid bare last week. As the continent contributes just three per cent of global scholarly output, despite representing a rapidly growing share of the world’s population, university leaders, editors, and academics gathered to confront a hard truth: Africa does not merely need more research.
It needs more writers, better publishing systems, and stronger ownership of its intellectual voice. The launch of From Records to Publication: A Guide to Academic Authorship, edited by Professor Elisam Magara, is being positioned as more than a book release.
It is a statement of intent that African knowledge must be written, published, protected, and circulated on African terms.
“Africa still lags behind in research and publication. We still publish only three percent of all publications in the world,” said Makerere’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Barnabas Nawangwe.
“Yet our population will contribute 15 percent.” The imbalance, he argued, is not accidental. “There are historical reasons for this,” Nawangwe said.
“Slavery was there for 400 years… followed by 200 years of colonialism. So, 600 years of subjugation. You cannot just brush that away.”
Yet he insisted history cannot be an excuse for permanent marginalisation. Development, he said, is closely tied to knowledge production.
“Studies have shown that our level of development will depend on the contribution we make to knowledge,” he noted, pointing to China’s rise as an example of what sustained investment in research and publication can achieve.
Makerere, long regarded as East Africa’s intellectual heartbeat, has been trying to shift that trajectory. A decade ago, the university produced about 500 academic publications annually.
Today, it produces more than 2,000, according to Nawangwe. Its research profile has strengthened, and its global rankings have improved. Still, structural gaps remain, especially the scarcity of African-owned academic journals.
“Why can’t we have our own journals?” the Vice Chancellor asked, urging colleges to revive or establish strong scholarly outlets supported by Makerere University Press.
Regional journals, he argued, would reduce dependence on European, American, and Asian platforms and give African scholars more control over how their work is disseminated. It is into this landscape that Magara’s book arrives.
Conceived in 2022 and developed through an international call for submissions, From Records to Publication is both a practical manual and a philosophical reflection. Magara, a specialist in records and archives management, said about 30 abstracts were submitted after the call.
They were peer-reviewed, refined during a write-shop, and subjected to at least two rounds of review. Chapters written by editors were reviewed by three independent scholars to ensure objectivity.
“My role was to organise what the authors had written and then plan which chapter comes first and which comes last,” Magara explained.
The project benefited from a sabbatical leave granted by the Vice Chancellor, a time that Magara says proved decisive.
“If I didn’t have that sabbatical, this book would not be how it is,” he said.
Submitted to Makerere University Press in July 2024, the manuscript underwent rigorous editorial scrutiny. Magara praised the press for insisting on copyright permissions, accurate referencing, and strict compliance with publishing ethics.
“I think people should know that you really do the real publishing,” he said, emphasising that nothing in the book would be vulnerable to ethical challenge after publication.
The finished volume contains 17 chapters organised into three sections: the foundations of academic writing, managing the publication process, and ensuring impact and mentorship.
It opens with big questions, where ideas come from, how thought becomes record, and how record becomes publication. It moves through practical terrain: copyright, co-authorship disputes, translation, citation standards, bibliographic control, publication costs, and research impact factors. It closes with mentorship.
“You will not write alone,” Magara said, underscoring the collaborative nature of scholarship.
The book has drawn praise beyond Uganda. In his endorsement, Jorgen Lorentzen, International Secretary of the Norwegian Association of Nonfiction and Translators (NFFO), invoked the power of language itself.
“In the beginning was the word. Words created the world,” Lorentzen wrote. He described the volume as one that explores “the development of writing and writing as an academic practice,” alongside publishing and reading as “the two necessary companions of writing.”
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