SN 4 EP 12: From Fragmentation to Connection: Giving African Knowledge an Identity

What happens when African knowledge exists, but the systems that hold it cannot connect?

Africa produces remarkable research, innovations, cultural knowledge and other forms of intellectual contribution. Yet much of this knowledge remains fragmented across disconnected systems, making it harder to discover, connect, attribute and measure its impact.

In this episode of Mazungumzo: African Scholarly Conversations, Joy Owango speaks with Nabil Ksibi, Co-founder of DOCiD™ and Co-project Lead, Africa PID Alliance, about the need for stronger, African-led knowledge infrastructure. Their conversation explores persistent identifiers, the fragmentation of African research information systems, and how DOCiD™ can help give different forms of African knowledge a trusted digital identity.

Here are the key things to look out for:

1. The fragmentation of African knowledge systems

African research and innovation exist across institutions, publications, datasets, projects and other knowledge systems, but these systems are often disconnected. Nabil explains how this fragmentation affects visibility, collaboration, impact measurement and opportunities for funding.

2. Why Africa needs to shape its own infrastructure

The Africa PID Alliance is positioned as an African-led initiative that complements global PID infrastructure while responding to Africa’s own realities, languages, cultural contexts and infrastructure needs. As Nabil puts it, Africa should have “a seat at the table” where infrastructure decisions are made.

3. DOCiD™ and the identity of knowledge

Nabil describes DOCiD™ as a “digital identity and documentation framework for knowledge.” The idea extends beyond conventional scholarly outputs to datasets, cultural heritage collections, innovation projects, institutional repositories and other forms of knowledge that need to be uniquely identified, described, linked, discovered and preserved.

4. From preservation to recognition and sovereignty

The conversation looks at why preserving African and Indigenous knowledge requires more than storing content. Context, provenance, attribution and recognition matter too. The long-term vision is an African knowledge ecosystem that is open, trusted, interconnected and sovereign, with Africa not only producing knowledge but helping shape the infrastructure through which knowledge is governed globally.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazumgumzo – African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia and research fields across Africa through open dialogue on Mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango  

Welcome to Mazungumzo, African Scholarly Conversations, a podcast where we engage with Africa’s leading policymakers, science communication, and scholarly communication specialists, innovators, researchers, and higher education leaders who are shaping the continent’s scholarly and research landscape. I’m your host, Joy Owango, the executive director of the Training Center in Communication, an award-winning capacity-building trust based at the University of Nairobi Chiromo Campus in Kenya. Today, I’m delighted to be joined by Nabil Aziz Ksibi. He’s the co-project lead of the Africa PID Alliance and one of the key architects behind DOCiD™, Africa’s first continent-originated persistent identifier framework, Nabil is deeply committed to strengthening African scholarship and enhancing its visibility, discoverability, and impact on the global stage. An international open science consultant and research infrastructure expert Nabil has spent many years advancing higher education systems, open access repositories, and persistent identifier infrastructures across Africa and the Middle East. With extensive experience in enterprise systems, committee leadership, and strategic engagement with global initiatives such as ORCID, he has become a leading voice in the development of trusted, interoperable, and sustainable scholarly infrastructure. Through his work, Nabil has championed innovative infrastructure integrations that connect African researchers to global knowledge networks while supporting the stewardship and visibility of indigenous knowledge and local, indigenous and local knowledge. His efforts continue to shape how open science, digital infrastructure, and evidence-based scholarship contribute to equitable development, research excellence, and innovation across the continent. Nabil, it is a pleasure to have you today with us at Mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations. Welcome, Nabil.

Nabil Ksibi

Thank you, Joy, and thank you to TCC Africa and for the invitation and for the great introduction. I mean, we always say that we are not doing enough, but I mean, thank you so much for including all these details around what I did. Oh yes,

Joy Owango

You do quite a lot.

Nabil Ksibi

Yeah. I know it’s truly an honor to be here, and I’ve always, you know, admired the role TCC Africa is playing in strengthening you know the African scholarship in science communication across the continent, also to federate countries whether you are from the west, east, north, or south, etc. That’s a big work that TCC Africa is doing.

Joy Owango

Thank you so much. So let’s get to it. What is the Africa PID Alliance, and why was it established?

Nabil Ksibi

Yeah, so the Africa PID Alliance is a collaborative initiative. It’s dedicated to strengthening Africa’s knowledge infrastructure through the adoption and development of persistent identifiers, or what we call PIDs. And these PIDs are now really the key components of building an open research infrastructure. They are mentioned in the UNESCO recommendations for open science. They are now used widely. Some of them do have millions of IDs in their registries. So that’s a very important component to include if you want to advance knowledge and trust between research institutions and between research communities globally  Because, as you know, in Africa, I know researchers now need identifiers. Institutions need identifiers. Research outputs need identifiers, and increasingly, data sets, projects, cultural assets, innovations, and all that. For all that, we really need identifiers. So this is why the alliance brings together organizations, institutions, and experts across Africa to ensure that the African scholarship and innovation are properly connected, discoverable, and findable and recognizable, both locally and globally.

Joy Owango

Okay, and what gap in the African research ecosystem is the alliance seeking to address?

Nabil Ksibi

So, that’s a good question. So one of the biggest challenge in Africa is, and you know better than me that it’s you know fragmentation. So we’re having we’re having excellent research is being like conducted across the continent, but usually and often, the systems that manage these research and the research information are disconnected. So that’s like one of the biggest challenges that I can see in Africa. So researchers might not be linked to their institutions, and publications may not be linked to datasets, and innovations may not be connected to projects and who produce them. So this fragmentation really limits visibility first, collaboration, impact. When we talked about that percentage of research output that is that’s coming from Africa, and why we are still at that three or 5% You know, comparing to the global production of research, this is one of those reasons, and of course, measurement and funding opportunities. So this really lack of connection between systems and lack of visibility is limiting all things funding as well. Because any funder, whether you are from Africa or from anywhere else, you really need to see a good follow up on your grants, on where you invested your money at the end.

Joy Owango

Basically, what you’re saying it is trying to connect the missing gap on African research output, to make it as accessible as possible.  And why do you think it is important for Africa to develop and lead its own PID infrastructure initiatives rather than solely relying on systems developed elsewhere?

Nabil Ksibi

So, and like it’s very simple. The APA, by all its products, we are trying to complement what’s existing, you know, like global initiatives, rather than competing with them. That’s the very first vision and very first mission that we are having at the alliance. So what makes it unique is that it is African-led and it’s African-focused. So we understand the realities, priorities, languages, cultural contexts, and infrastructure challenges that that exist across the continent. And this is where the alliance advocates for solutions that are globally, you know, interoperable, while you know remaining or having this local footprint and remaining locally relevant. We really believe that Africa should have a seat, you know, at the at the table where infrastructure decisions are made. Not simply receive decisions made everywhere, made you know elsewhere.

Joy Owango

Now the Africa PID Alliance has created the persistent identifier framework known as the Digital Object Container Identifier, in short, Doc ID. And in simple terms, why should researchers, innovators, and even ordinary citizens across Africa care about it?

Nabil Ksibi

About the digital object container,

Joy Owango

Exactly the DOCiD™.

Nabil Ksibi

So, like before, we talk about you know docked. It’s very important to understand that in Africa we still do not have a good adoption of systems, repository, and institutional warehouses where we can store our data. That’s a common problem in in Africa, right? So DOCiD™ in very simple terms is the digital identity and documentation framework for knowledge. Right, it’s not only a platform. We are really trying to create, sort of a conversation. You know, sort of an infrastructure that can talk to other infrastructures and you know federate knowledge in it. So just as people have, passports and researchers have ORCID IDs, knowledge, you know, objects also need to some trusted identities, and these objects can include research outputs, datasets, and just knowledge records, cultural heritage collections, innovation projects, institutional repositories, and many other form of knowledge. So that’s how we thought about DOCiD™ and how it can help create trusted and interconnected or connected ecosystem where knowledge can be uniquely identified, described, linked, discovered, and preserved.

Joy Owango

Okay, so what problem or gap in the current knowledge and research ecosystem inspired the creation of DOCiD™, and why was it important for this solution to be developed from an African perspective?

Nabil Ksibi

So, that’s also that’s linked to  the other. I mean, that’s natural question to the other. Yes, like why do I have DOCiD™? So really, many existing system in Africa and perhaps globally were designed primarily for research environments and on. like the term, but designed in the global north.

Joy Owango

Yes, I mean that’s where the technology had its strength anyway to begin with.

Nabil Ksibi

So and they like provide tremendous value. Africa is benefiting out of those systems a lot, and that helped leveling up discoverability and visibility for the African researchers. Thing is that Africa faces unique realities, and I’m seeing that, witnessing that in Northern Africa, just very similar, like to some other regions in Africa, that the knowledge ecosystem extends beyond traditional scholarly publications. It includes community knowledge, as you always say, oral traditions, local like innovations and cultural collections, government reports,  development projects and multilingual resources. So all these needs to be included in this identification system and included in a sort of digital infrastructure, right? So DOCiD™ was therefore designed for you know from an African perspective, not to replace global infrastructures, but to implement them and ensure Africa becomes an active architect of its you know own knowledge future.

Joy Owango

So now with that, why do we need DOCiD™? I’m playing devil’s advocate. Why do we need doc ID when you already have identifiers such as ORCID, DOIs, ROR, and other existing pids? And also, I’m also cognizant of the fact that other regions in the world are also creating their national or regional PIDS. So, why do we need DOCiD™?

Nabil Ksibi

Well, why do we need that? That is a very good question. So, if we want to answer it, we need to talk about how does this DOCiD™ fit within the  like Africa PID Alliance mission, right? And how we can how and why the Africa PID Alliance would like to promote digital object container identifiers, right? So like person identifiers are now the building blocks of a trusted digital infrastructure, right? That’s what UNESCO recommendations is pushing for. That’s why we have a lot of other guide guidelines and guidance out there, like the Posi, principles, like the Barcelona Declaration for Open science for open research infrastructure. There is a lot of even on the European I call that European Union or European Commission guidelines on PIDS on personal identifiers. You can find there ORCID, DOIs and identifiers for objects and ROR ID for institutions, etc. So this is why, like when we know who created something, where it originated, who funded it, and how it connects to other inputs, we create a more transparent and reliable knowledge system, right? This is why we are choosing personal identifiers within the DOCiD™, and this is why you, as a researcher, as an innovator, as a author, it is like beneficial for you to use DOCiD™ and to use different, you know, components of it and different identifiers to identify your work, your institution, and yourself,  through that.

Joy Owango

Okay, so how does DOCiD™ help ensure that African research, indigenous knowledge, cultural heritage, and local innovations are properly documented, recognized, and preserved for future generations?

Nabil Ksibi

So, and that’s a good question because as I’m working with institutions here in in Tunisia and North Africa, it’s always and we recently had this question at the Burkina Faso training for  DOCiD™ and the thing is that preservation is not simply about storage. It’s not just about storing your data, and that’s it. Because at the end, you can store them at your hard drive for in your laptop or you know at local server. Thing is that story preservation is also about context, right? So what DOCiD™ does is that it enables us to document not only what exists, but also who created it and where it originated and how it evolved. That’s very good also part because it’s including project identifiers and including, RAID which are telling the story of your project, like identifying the data manage your data management plan, and that’s very important, right? It’s in the context of indigenous knowledge. If we can go back there, it’s very important because preserving context is as important as preserving the content itself. It’s very important to highlight that, and we integrated culture like this local context API, which is giving labels and annotations on clarifying the context as well of the identification of the object itself. So by creating this sort of structured and connected records, I think DOCiD™ is on a good way to help ensure you know these assets can remain Discoverable, recognized, and protected over time.

Joy Owango

But it also includes, with what you’ve mentioned. It also includes national identifiers or identities. So it  also enhances provenance for non-researchers who are involved, especially community leaders or elders who are involved in the process of the research or that was conducted on indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage, because not everybody will have an orcid ID. So this interconnectivity is really important, don’t you think?

Nabil Ksibi

Exactly. So it’s an open infrastructure. That’s what we. What we target at the Africa PID Alliance and with products like DOCiD™, it must include a gateway to connect with local identifiers, national identifiers, institutional identifiers. This is how we take those this data from the silos and get them you know interconnect them and make them interoperable with the rest of the infrastructure globally.

Joy Owango

Okay, that’s good, and also it gives proper recognition and ownership of those who are not particularly researchers, but they played a major role in the process of the of the research, particularly when it comes to indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage. Because we are looking at proper attributions, and there is so much that maybe like the credit system can do because the credit system is connected to ORCID. So what happens if you’re a non-research and you want to be recognized for the work you’ve done? So I think that interconnectivity is really important because we end up,  we are going to have more transparent ways and systems when it comes to acknowledgement and attribution. When it comes to research that is being done on indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage, and I don’t think this is an African problem. It is literally everywhere you go. This is a standard problem that I hope the doc ID will be able to solve. What are your thoughts on that?

Nabil Ksibi

I hear you on that. And you know, ORCID itself is like the abbreviation of ORCID is the open researcher and contributor ID. So the word contributor is very much important in in that personal identification system, and that’s not only reflected on the English knowledge and cultural heritage, but also in the like research ecosystem space where you need to identify that lab laboratory technician, that you know assistant, that  contributor to whatever project, research project, and also the objects that are running the research itself. So now moving forward now, everything needs to be identified, including into that the global digital bubble, if you can say. Especially now, we’re having this big wave of AI. It it’s it  would be you know mandatory and it would be something dangerous if we don’t do it to not identify the sources of all these objects and the persons as well you know otherwise we will also be in another discussion about data governance and now facing AI, not facing communities, right? So the narrative will change, and who knows how it’s going to be.

Joy Owango

So now looking ahead, what impact do you hope Doc ID will have on African universities, research institutions, governments, knowledge creators over the decade, over the next decade, and well, are we looking beyond Africa? What is the plan here?

Nabil Ksibi

So probably in 10 years, every African university and research institution will have their interoperable knowledge infrastructure. Not only talking about institutional repositories, but the whole solid research infrastructure in place, and researchers, will receive greater visibility and recognition. We’re going to also make sure that we help policymakers to have better access to trusted evidence because, like the future of DOCiD™, is not only about cultural heritage and its knowledge, but it’s open to you know to include and to integrate different fields and different research projects and research ecosystems. Cultural institutions, of course, that will be at our center and focus of work. But like preserving and sharing heritage collections responsibly is very. I mean, will help moving and moving things in Africa, in the in some good sense where we at least leave this for the next need something you know digital and well preserved for the next generations. Even though physically those objects will disappear, and that’s very important,  to humankind of for the story of humanity. Africa, hopefully, I mean, you will become a global leader, one of the global leaders in knowledge infrastructure, in innovation. So that’s also one of the nice objectives to have with DOCiD™.

Joy Owango

That’s true. And now, so for young Africans who are conducting research, building innovations, creating content, or preserving community knowledge, what opportunity does Doc ID create for them, and what message would you like to leave with them?

Nabil Ksibi

So, young Africans are already producing extraordinary knowledge and innovation. I’m seeing, here in Tunisia, a small country, but I found out that we are producing a lot in the, especially in those new fields like AI, robotics, and all that. So I think products like DOCiD™ can help them Establish visibility, attribution, credibility, and long-term recognition for their for their contributions. Because until now we are still relying on systems from when we collaborate with a university in Europe or in the U.S. you register your co-project or like your contribution within the systems of that foreigner university. I mean, as foreigner, it’s nice, nice collaborator. But at the end, we want also to have a sort of a print on that on that work and co-own it in a way. So if we have systems like DOCiD™ and institutional repositories in place, we can we can assign that work as well within our international statistics and national reporting.

Joy Owango

Okay. As we wind up, if we were to have this conversation again in 20 years, what legacy would you hope DOCiD™ and the Africa PID alliance would have left on Africa’s knowledge landscape?

Nabil Ksibi

Yeah, that’s a big . So I just hope that we could say Africa successfully built a knowledge ecosystem that is open. That is also trusted and connected or interconnected, and most importantly, sovereign.

Joy Owango

Yes, the issue of sovereignty is important.

Nabil Ksibi

So I really would hope that future generations can easily, discover African scholarship, trace African innovations, and access preserved cultural and English knowledge. I think most importantly is that I hope that Africa would be recognized not only as a producer of knowledge, but also as leader in the infrastructure that supports and govern knowledge globally.

Joy Owango

That is really a nice way to wind up. Thank you so much, Nabil. This has been amazing.

Nabil Ksibi

Thank you, Joy. That was a pleasure to be with you here today.

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