Dataset for bibliometric study on emerging technologies for African development

This dataset contains bibliographic records documenting scholarly research on emerging technologies and African development published between 2016 and 2025. Records were retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and OpenAlex on 17 June 2026 using a search strategy encompassing emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, the Internet of Things, renewable energy technologies, biotechnology, and related technologies within an African development context. The initial records comprised 5,316 from Scopus, 2,581 from WoS, and 8,418 from OpenAlex. Following temporal, geographical, document-type, and language screening, 3,586 records were exported. The datasets were merged and harmonised using Scopus-compatible bibliographic fields. Duplicate records were removed using DOI matching and, where DOI information was unavailable, title-based matching, resulting in 2,821 unique records. Further quality checks involving missing titles and publication years produced a final analytical dataset of 2,814 records. The dataset includes bibliographic metadata such as authors, titles, sources, publication years, abstracts, keywords, DOIs, affiliations, publishers, citations, and country information. Data were cleaned, standardised nd analysed in R using the bibliometrix package for the performance analysis and  VOSviewer for network visualisation.