COVID-19-related research in Africa: a cross-sectional review of the International Clinical Trial Registration Platform (ICTRP)

Objective: The declaration of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a pandemic in early 2020, has seen an upsurge in research globally to fill gaps in the epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus impact on health care and clinical management, as well as possible prevention and treatment modalities. Published literature on the different types of COVID-19 research conducted globally is varied and is particularly limited in Africa. This study sets out to describe the COVID-19-related research registered and conducted on the African continent. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of all COVID-19-related studies available in the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) repository. We extracted studies registered from March 1, 2020, to July 15, 2021. A descriptive analysis of the extracted data was performed, and the findings were presented. Results: At extraction, a total of 12,533 COVID-19-related studies were listed on the ICTRP portal. We included 9803 studies, after excluding 2060 duplicate records and 686 records without a site/country. While 9347 studies (96%) were conducted outside of Africa, only 456 studies (4%) were conducted in the African continent, of which 270 (59.2%) were interventional studies, and 184 (40.4%) were observational studies. About 80% of the studies were conducted in Egypt and South Africa, and most of these involved testing of drugs and biologicals. Conclusion: The African continent hosts considerably fewer COVID-19-related research compared to other parts of the world. This may have implications on scientific evidence available for implementing COVID-19 control efforts. There is, therefore, a need for local funding and ownership of research projects and north-south collaboration in research.