This project deploys the concepts and concerns of social capital (Puttnam et al, 2004) to the study of African knowledge production and the extent of its integration within the international system of knowledge production. Central to the idea of social capital is the assumption that social networks - and the associated norms of reciprocity and trust that they generate - have value: both for the people who are in them; and in terms of the public goods that they produce. In this research we use social network analysis to map African authorship in international academic journals and journal articles dedicated to the study of African governance and public policy issues. We use bibliographic data from the Thompson Web of Knowledge (WoK; formerly ISI) database to carry out a bibliometric analysis of key issues in the scholarship on African governance and public policy. At a theoretical level, as well as contributing to emergent African studies of Social Capital (Fine, 2003; Jerven, 2006; Miruka and Omenya, 2009), this research contributes to a broadening of conceptualizations of social capital into the realm of ‘knowledge production’. At an empirical level, we posit an evidence-based means to indicate the extent of African social capital in the international system of knowledge production, as well as uncovering the extent to which indigenous African scholarship contributes to the globalized academic scholarship on the ‘wicked problems’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973) of African governance and public policy.