COVID-19 pandemic and African innovation: Finding the good from the bad using Twitter data and text mining approach

Andy Ohemeng Asare; Eric Ohemeng Sarpong; Ngoc Truong Holds; Patrick Osei-Bonsu; Samuel Ahado; William Gyasi Mensah

doi:10.1111/issj.12386

COVID-19 pandemic and African innovation: Finding the good from the bad using Twitter data and text mining approach

Int Soc Sci J. 2022 Nov 30:10.1111/issj.12386. doi: 10.1111/issj.12386. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Andy Ohemeng Asare¹, Eric Ohemeng Sarpong², Ngoc Truong Holds³, Patrick Osei-Bonsu⁴, Samuel Ahado⁴, William Gyasi Mensah⁴

Affiliations

¹ Professor George Brown College 200 King Street East Toronto Ontario Canada.
² University of Electronics Science and Technology of China No.2006, Xiyuan Avenue. West Hi-Tech. Zone Chengdu P.R. China.
³ George Brown College 200 King Street East Toronto Ontario Canada.
⁴ University of Electronic Science and Technology of China No.2006, Xiyuan Avenue West Hi-Tech. Zone Chengdu P.R. China.

Abstract

This study investigates public sentiments and the essential topics of discussion on Africa's innovation amidst COVID-19. Web scraping techniques were used to collect and parse data from Twitter platform using the keywords "Africa Innovation COVID-19". A total of 54,318 cleaned English tweets were gathered and analysed using Twint Python Libraries. Our sentiment analysis findings revealed that 28,084 tweets (52 per cent) were positive, 21,037 (39 per cent), and 5197 (9 per cent) of tweets were neutral and negative, respectively, for Polarity sentiments. Notably, Healthcare, Imagination, Support, Webinar, Learning, Future, Rwanda, and Challenge were the most discussed topics on Africa's innovation during COVID-19. The topic labelling sentiments on the themes identified were positive, neutral, and negative, respectively. The study also revealed a cluster relationship between all identified topics. The relationship among these themes divulged how COVID-19 is positively shaping social and technological innovation in Africa. The study further presented practical implications to better position African leaders and policymakers to capitalise on the current innovation ecosystems and institutional capacities to transform the continent into a digital and innovation hub. The research concludes with theoretical recommendations and study limitations that will guide researchers and academicians in conducting future research in the subject area.