From Periphery to Presence: Authorship, Venues, and Education in African HCI.

Abstract

HCI in Africa is growing yet fragmented and underrepresented globally. We map 2002–2024 activity via a bibliometric scan of 500+ papers ( 300 venues) and an institutional survey in 11 countries, situating results by population, connectivity, and policy readiness, and including work outside HCI labels (e.g., NGOs, tech hubs). We find a post-2020 rise in Africa-led publications and sharper venue stratification: mainstream venues feature mixed teams, while local outlets host much Africa-centered work; teaching shows strong pockets amid capacity, resource, and curriculum constraints. We contribute (1) a continent-scale, context-aware map of authorship and venues; (2) design provocations beyond expansionist logics; and (3) actionable steps for reviewers, venues, and institutions, supported by an open corpus and interactive dashboard.

Citation

Houda Elmimouni, Khadijah D Mohammed, Hafeni Mthoko, Shaimaa Lazem, and Nicola J Bidwell. 2026. From Periphery to Presence: Authorship, Venues, and Education in African HCI. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 360, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791668