Financing Open Research: a focus on African publishing platforms and journals

Africa's open access publishing ecosystem, spanning roughly 1,790 journals and platforms like AJOL, AfricaArXiv, and Open Research Africa, is far more fragile than its policy visibility suggests. A new INASP policy paper reveals that most of this infrastructure survives through unpaid academic labour, informal institutional subsidies, and short-term donor cycles rather than any coordinated public investment. The total cost of sustaining the entire system is estimated at $7.2 to $14.3 million annually, a figure modest by global standards, yet no structured financing mechanism exists to cover it. The core argument is not that Africa lacks resources for open research, but that existing contributions are unrecognised, uncoordinated, and unsustainable in their current form. The paper calls for Science Granting Councils, national governments, universities, and regional bodies to formalise institutional underwriting, integrate publishing infrastructure into national research budgets, and build regional consortia.