Examining African contributions to global health: Reflections on knowledge circulation and innovation.

This article unites different disciplinary debates on 'southern innovation', 'theory from the South', and 'decolonisation of knowledge' in order to discuss existing understandings around the role of Africa in the production of health-related knowledge, public health policy, and medical innovation. Arguing that high-income countries have much to learn from the global South when it comes to health-related knowledge and practices, we propose an interdisciplinary research approach to uncovering and examining African contributions to global health, drawing on an ongoing collaborative project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We present four empirical case studies concerning drug development, healthcare systems, and urban planning to critically enquire into both historical and contemporary transcontinental knowledge circulation and learning potentials, as much as cases of forgetting and silencing. On this basis, we argue that 'learning from the South' must mean more than transplanting quick and cheap technological fixes to serve societies in the global North, but rather recognising the vast contributions that Africans have made to global epistemologies, without losing sight of the asymmetries inherent in South-North knowledge exchanges. Lessons learned might apply to fields other than those discussed here and go far beyond 'reverse innovation'.

More than seven decades of Acta Tropica: Looking back to move into the future.

Acta Tropica is an international, peer-reviewed journal advancing scientific research in the fields of tropical medicine and parasitology. This article elucidates the rich history of the journal and speculates about its future. Acta Tropica was launched in 1944 and formed an integral part of the establishment and running of the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel. After two distinct periods of relatively small publication activities (1944-1976 and 1977-1988), in 1989, Acta Tropica was transferred to the Dutch publisher Elsevier. Subsequently, the annual number of publications steadily increased and the scope of the journal broadened to the biology of pathogens and their vectors, to genetics, host-parasite relationships, mechanisms of pathogenicity, diagnostics, and treatment of tropical diseases. The body of published articles contributed to an improved understanding of the prevention, surveillance, control, and elimination of diseases that are intimately linked to poverty, such as malaria and neglected tropical diseases. In recent years, the scope of Acta Tropica was widening to target emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, epidemics and pandemics, interrelations of microbes, viruses, and parasites, co-dependencies of epidemiology, ecology, environment, and climate change. Importantly, non-communicable diseases are gaining interest in low- and middle-income countries due to urbanization, globalization, and rapidly changing life styles, and hence, these issues receive growing prominence. Acta Tropica continues to embrace inter- and, indeed, transdisciplinary research to address pressing global health issues and sustainable development.

More than seven decades of Acta Tropica: Partnership to advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The inaugural issue of Acta Tropica has been published in 1944, at a time of utmost international isolation and uncertainty due to World War II. Now, more than seven decades later, Acta Tropica is a trusted outlet to communicate and disseminate scientific advances in the fields of parasitology and tropical medicine. As a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal, Acta Tropica contributes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, that is "Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all of all ages". This article explores how Acta Tropica has evolved over time. Our analysis is based on a systematic review of keywords derived from all issues published in a specific year, arbitrarily selected at decadal snapshots (1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020). Results indicate a decrease in interdisciplinarity in favour of more specialised expertise in various fields of infectious diseases research and public health with a particular emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. Yet, by examining first and last authors' institutional affiliations and classifying countries by the Human Development Index (HDI), we find that most authors are affiliated with institutions in high- and very high-HDI countries. Over time, the mean number of authors on a paper has increased severalfold (from 1.35 in 1950 to 7.51 in 2020). Taken together, Acta Tropica has become increasingly globally anchored and contributes not only to SDG 3, but increasingly also to SDG 17, that is "Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development".