# Western Academic Footprint

In institutional analysis, does the presence of elite Western academic institutions in African clinical trials indicate intellectual partnership or structural hegemony? This audit estimated that thirty-four percent of 23,873 African interventional trials on ClinicalTrials.gov had explicit affiliations with top-tier Western institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard through March 2026. Investigators reported the academic penetration rate as the primary estimand for institutional influence. Western academic institutions frequently occupied the principal investigator and sponsor positions, shaping the research questions, methodologies, and publication strategies for trials conducted on African soil. The 1,793 HIV trials showed the strongest Western academic footprint through PEPFAR-affiliated networks at Uganda and Kenya institutions. Local African institutional leadership was most prominent in Egypt where domestic universities led the majority of the 11,752 registered trials. These findings reveal a structural hierarchy where scientific priorities are frequently defined in the Global North. Interpretation is limited by name-matching heuristics for institutional identification.

## References

1. Alemayehu C, et al. "Behind the mask of the African clinical trials landscape." Trials. 2018;19:519.
2. Drain PK, et al. "Global migration of clinical trials." Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018;17:765-766.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/governance-justice/dashboards/western-academic-footprint.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/governance-justice/code/western-academic-footprint.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05