What do we know about Computing Education in Africa? A Systematic Review of Computing Education Research Literature

Abstract: Noticeably, Africa is underrepresented in the computing education research (CER) community. However, there has been some effort from the researchers in the region to contribute to the growing need for computing for all. To understand the body of works that emerged from the global south region and their area of focus in computing education, we conducted a systematic review of the literature. This research investigates the prominent CER journals and conferences to discern the kind of research that has been published and how much contribution they have made to the growing field. Of the 68 selected studies, 45 papers were from South Africa. The prominent aspect of computing in the literature is programming, which accounts for 43%. We identified open areas for research in the context and discussed the implication of our findings for the development of CER in Africa.