ABSTRACT
This paper discusses a form of neoliberal hegemony manifest in the mobilisation of information and communication technologies (IT) to control and discipline global intellectual discourse. With the aid of IT, some reputable international databases organise and analyse data collected from a skewed proportion of world's primary information sources, mainly available in the northern hemisphere and make generalisations about the state and structure of global knowledge. Considering their collections as archetypical evidence of world science, the databases do not accord adequate deference to the global diversity and complexity in human and other resources, which influence the understanding and practice of science in different communities, with the resultant emergence of a one-dimensional 'northern' intellectual edifice. Although this development is being balanced by the birth of other databases that have regional, national and organisational focuses, respectively, such infrastructure is not yet available in Africa with the consequence that there is no source for adequate understanding of scientific activities in Africa.
