A concurrent focus on higher education on the continent is also needed for African countries to sustainably develop their capacity and economies and lift the region out of underdevelopment.

Despite the wide range of capacity and resources within and between African countries, a legitimate generalization is that strengthening research and research-publishing are crucial priorities for improving higher education in Africa.

[2] At the same time as information sources from the developed world are currently made available for free to Africa (such as HINARI, AGORA, OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment), JSTOR African Access Initiative, and Aluka), there needs to be a corresponding focus on the online availability of information from Africa if increased local capacity in research and dissemination is to be attained.

AJOL provides an online system for the aggregation of African-published scholarly journals and offers global access to and visibility of the research output of the continent.

AJOL hosts over 350 peer-reviewed journals from 27 African countries covering a variety of disciplines including health, education, agriculture, science and technology, the environment, and arts and culture.

The AJOL project was initiated in 1998 by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), a charitable organisation based in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.

Following the proven need for the AJOL model in developing countries, INASP is currently establishing similar fledgling "JOL"s in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nepal.