Navigating the Infodemic: A Bibliometric Analysis of African Research on Covid-19 Misinformation

The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an unprecedented infodemic characterized by the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, presenting significant challenges to public health communication and knowledge governance globally and particularly Africa due to its peculiarity. Despite growing scholarly attention to this phenomenon, a comprehensive mapping of African research on COVID-19 misinformation remains limited. This study addressed this gap through a bibliometric analysis – a quantitative investigation of research productivity, impact, collaboration, thematic structures, and the evolution of knowledge within a specific field of study. Bibliometric indicators were extracted from Scopus and Web of Science using pertinent keywords on 29 March 2026. At initial search, 1,128 documents were identified from the two databases. Data processing, analysis and vitualization were performed using excel, R, bibliometrix and VOSviewer, respectively. Result revealed that the 320 documents analyzed has 4,575 total citations with 33 H-index and 120 i10-index. Year 2022 produced the highest publications while Apuke and Vaccines Journal contributed most to research in the field. The co-authorship network visualization demonstrates several small and moderately connected research hubs. The keyword co-occurrence visualizations identify four major thematic clusters each focusing on epidemiology, vaccination, misinformation and psychological factors that constituted the major conceptual hubs linking public health, behavioral, and communication related studies. Recommendations such as evidence-based communication approaches, promotion of digital and health literacy education and motivation for open access publishing among others were proposed.