Enhancing Learning Analytics through Learning Management Systems Engagement in African Higher Education

In the African higher education landscape, the pervasive integration of Learning Management Systems (LMS) is reshaping the educational journey, offering both opportunities and challenges. This study delved into the intricate interplay between students' engagement with LMS and its consequential impact on Learning Analytics (LA), specifically within the unique context of African higher education institutions. Employing the PRISMA systematic review approach, this research aimed to review significant work by researchers towards LMS and LA use in African universities in the form of contributing authors, keywords, citation statistics and growth patterns. The findings highlighted the transformative potential of LA and LMS use, which have the power to enhance both academic performance and the overall learning experience of African students. This research enhances the understanding of the complex relationship between LMS usage and LA in the African context, revealing how digital tools can address unique online learning challenges. As African institutions tackle 21st-century education challenges, this study provides a valuable roadmap for educators, administrators, and policymakers looking to leverage technology for meaningful educational outcomes. By contextualizing the findings within the African higher education landscape, this research contributes to the global discourse on the evolving role of digital platforms in shaping modern education.


LITERATURE REVIEW
The implementation of educational technology for e-learning purposes can have a dire impact on organisational strategy and functioning,11 organisational culture, 12 and learning analytics. 13Moreover, the implementation of e-learning demands substantial resources and infrastructure. 14The adoption of e-learning further brings about other challenges, such as the need to train staff members, 15 data management, and data mining related to the use of these technologies.In a similar context, Aung and Khaing add that developing countries face additional challenges, such as poor network infrastructure, lack of ICT knowledge, and weakness of content development, etc, pertaining to the implementation of e-learning. 16allenges Associated with LMS Integration Yunus conducted a study within an Indonesian population to investigate the advantages and obstacles associated with the adoption of LMS. 17 Their research findings indicate that LMSs have the potential to enrich the educational experience by offering convenient and immediate communication channels, promoting collaborative learning, and facilitating student discussions.Conversely, LMS implementation can pose difficulties for instructors and educators, including issues like limited platform accessibility due to unreliable internet connections, inadequate training, and the challenges presented by students who may lack confidence in utilizing the associated technology. 18Moreover, instructors may find themselves in the ongoing task of moderating students' discussions and comments, demanding a substantial time commitment. 19According to Zheng et al., the successful integration of LMS within an institution largely depends on organisational support, technical support and lecturers' technology self-efficacy beliefs. 20These observations underscore the inherent challenges that accompany the adoption of e-learning.
The adoption of digital technologies for teaching and learning comes with challenges.One of the main challenges highlighted in recent years is the lack of educational technology skills among instructors and teachers. 21Due to the lack of these skills, universities have had to train their instructional staff on using these newly adopted educational technologies. 22Dole et al. emphasized that educators must possess not only technical proficiency for integrating emerging technologies but also a profound understanding of innovative pedagogical approaches suitable for the realm of online learning. 23In line with Marek, Chew, and Wu's findings, instructors confront many obstacles when shifting from conventional teaching methodologies to technology-enabled pedagogical approaches. 24esearchers distinguished between the challenges that hinder the adoption of e-learning in developing and developed countries.In the context of African countries, e-learning was primarily embraced as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.However, the lack of prior training for academic staff in using these educational technologies resulted in various difficulties when it came to accessing and utilizing LMS platforms. 25onsequently, higher education institutions bear the responsibility of supporting educators to facilitate a smooth transition.Bahar et al. additionally highlight that online learning introduces physical barriers that hinder direct interaction between students and teachers, thereby posing challenges for educators in assessing and verifying student progress. 26Considering these challenges, Nadeem and Blumenstein argue that the implementation of LA has the potential to mitigate these issues and alleviate the cognitive burden on teachers, ultimately enhancing the learning experience. 27

Benefits of LMS Integration in Higher Education
Along with these challenges, LMS have become integral tools in modern education, transforming the way educators deliver content and assess student performance.Moreover, the integration of learning analytics with LMS has added a layer of sophistication, enabling institutions to gather, analyze, and leverage data to enhance the learning experience. 28The advent of COVID-19 has accelerated online learning adoption across many African universities.For instance, in South Africa, many universities have, over the past few years, adopted online learning platforms such as Sakai, Canvas, D2LBrightspace, Vula, Moodle LMS, Efundi, RUConnected and SunLearn. 29These platforms allow students to readily access learning material, facilitate discussions, submit assessments, etc, all through the use of a computer or mobile phone. 30The adoption of educational technology has many benefits for higher educational institutions.Implications are that universities can increase the use of LMS and achieve more effective outcomes from faculty for web-based distance learning and web-assisted course curricula by structuring their organisations better to support faculty in both technical and self-efficacy areas. 31

Learning Analytics in Higher Education
The notion of LA is an emerging field devoid of a singular, universally accepted definition.Numerous academics have introduced divergent conceptualizations, contending that they pertain to LA, with a significant proportion of these conceptualizations being inherently contingent upon contextual variables. 32According to Oreški, LA can be defined as "a data-centric field that applies machine learning algorithms in the educational domain to analyze e-learning environment data." 33The Society for Learning Analytics and Research (SoLAR) defined it as "the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs." 34LA stands as an emerging science, which promotes the use of digital tools and methodologies to enhance the learning process within diverse educational technology platforms. 35LA employs a combination of different disciplines, such as education, psychology, mathematics and computer science, to enhance the e-learning process.

Benefits and Challenges of Learning Analytics
LA enables data mining of educational data to discover learning patterns and predict student outcomes (i.e.whether or not students are likely to fail or pass). 36LA is a powerful tool that can be used to gain insights into data collected through students' use of e-learning platforms.As such, LA can be used to predict student success in an e-learning environment.LA may additionally serve as a means to ascertain the potential impact of e-learning instructional methods on academic achievement outcomes. 37Costa et al. conducted a study to evaluate the effectiveness of LA in determining the early prediction of students' academic failure in a programming course.Their findings unveiled LA as a viable strategy for anticipatory forecasting of student attrition rates, facilitating proactive interventions to mitigate such outcomes. 38Cerezo et al. further assert that LA serves as a valuable instrument for assessing student behaviour within e-learning environments, particularly in relation to the allocation of time and effort dedicated to the learning process. 39

The Intersection of LMS and LA in Higher Education
The application of LA in educational contexts underscores the significance of data acquisition as a foundation for informed decision-making within the field of education.Such utilization holds the potential to augment the operational efficacy of educational institutions, thereby fostering advancements in student academic attainment and enriching the overall educational experiences.Contemporary research underscores the paramount importance of integrating LMS data within the framework of LA. 40 Scholarly publications in peer-reviewed journals emphasize the imperative of harnessing LMS data proficiently via LA methodologies to elevate the quality of educational instruction and learning outcomes.
Numerous scholars assert that there exists a prevalent conflation between LA and LMS, suggesting an interrelationship between these concepts.Although LA and LMS are closely related components within the educational technology ecosystem, they serve distinct but complementary functions. 41Whilst LMS focuses on enabling e-learning through the use of educational technology, LA involves the analysis of data from various e-learning sources using techniques such as big data analytics, predictive analytics, data mining and the like to predict student learning outcomes. 42LMS platforms generate an extensive repository of data pertaining to student interactions and performance, whilst LA offers the means to examine and derive insights from this dataset systematically.Viberg et al. underscored that, notwithstanding its inherent potential, LA lacks substantial empirical evidence supporting its capacity to significantly elevate student achievement. 43Furthermore, its ethical deployment and widespread adoption remain relatively underdeveloped and incomplete.Another notable challenge of LA use is ethical and privacy issues pertaining to the secure management of data and the responsibilities attached to the use of these data. 44

METHODOLOGY
This study employed a systematic review process using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) methodology.The PRISMA methodology is a wellestablished framework designed to improve the transparency and rigor of systematic reviews, designed to enhance the quality and credibility of literature review research.The bibliometric method conducted in this study was initially proposed by Alan Pritchard. 45To date, this approach has been used to explore the published scholarly literature relevant to a knowledge base. 46In the field of higher education, many of its aspects were researched, for example; sustainable development, 47 speech disorders of preschoolers, 48 status of educational sciences, 49 and adoption of ICTs. 50A look closer at higher education, Pham et al. applied the bibliometric method to review the scholars of international student mobilities in Asia.Moreover, Hallinger and Chatpinyakoop were interested in sustainable development in HEIs. 51

Data Collection
Numerous scholars hold the perspective that Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar stand out as the most widely recognized and utilized database sources within the academic community.This study opted for the Scopus database to answer the research questions and Google Scholar to retrieve documents for analytical purposes.The selection of the Scopus database had an advantage in evaluating the performance citation analysis.Meanwhile, the Google Scholar database was chosen for its well-established reputation as a fitting platform for retrieving scholarly literature information, particularly pertaining to academic articles.Moreover, the preference for the Scopus database arose from its superior capacity for retrieving journal citations, as its coverage was found to be more extensive in comparison to that of the Web of Science. 52Consequently, Scopus was chosen as the primary data source for this research endeavour.The terms "learning management system" and "learning analytics" and their abbreviations "LMS" and "LA" were the two main keywords in the search string.Focusing on the topic study, the eligible documents had to be at the higher education level; the researchers therefore added "higher education" or "HE" to refine the search results.The initial query was conducted through the advanced search option on the Scopus database (www.scopus.com) at 17:31 on February 18, 2024, as presented in Table 1 below The first search result yielded 1,149 documents.The PRISMA guidelines applied to the systematic review of research were conducted to narrow the first search results. 53Figure 1 shows the steps of the PRISMA diagram.In the screening step, Scopus filters were used to exclude irrelevant records.

Data Analysis
In order to analyse the bibliometric data, first, the dataset as a Microsoft Excel file was downloaded.The Microsoft Excel dataset file had 143 records that were eligible for the analysis.Furthermore, the dataset contained records such as document title, document type, author name(s), author(s) affiliation, keywords, number of citations, document abstract, year of publication and document references.The dataset was used for bibliometric analysis in order to answer the four research questions of this study.The analysis of each research question was two-fold: scientific mappings and descriptive statistics.The descriptive statistics contained the author's names, authors' affiliations, and country of origin, as well as documents in LMS and LA in HE fields based on the citation count and number of publications.In this phase, three applications were utilised (i.e.VOSviewer, Tableau and Microsoft Excel).The VOSviewer and Tableau programs (https://www.tableau.com/)were utilised to visualise science mappings of the data.The researchers further used the science mappings to visualise the relationships between authors, affiliations, countries, and publications in LMS and LA subject areas.Their connections were established through the examination of co-authorship, co-citation sources, document coupling, and author keyword co-occurrences.Visualizations of scientific mappings in this study were generated using VOSviewer version 1.6.20 (available at https://www.vosviewer.com/).

Growth of LMS and LA literature over the years across African HEIs
Figure 2 depicts the results obtained from the longitudinal analysis of the dataset.The line graph shows the growth pattern of publications (i.e.publications comprised of articles, conference papers, books, and book chapters) in the literature from 2013 -2023.The initial LMS and LA in African higher education-related publications were published in 2015. 54The publication was about the building of an analytical tool for LMS to aid instructors and administrators in exploring students' online interaction patterns and knowledge development.The project recommended the use of Web log data generated by LMS to help instructors keep in touch with students' online interactions during distance learning.After the first publication in 2015, related studies on LMS and LA appeared to steadily increase between 2015 to 2016, followed by a slight decline in 2017.The next period, 2017 -2020, witnessed a surge in publications.This was followed by a decline between 2020 -2022, with publications dropping from 27 in 2020 to 20 publications in 2022.According to Makumane, the rise in publications from late 2019 to 2020 could be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic occurrence wherein many African HEIs adopted LMS for teaching and learning during lockdown. 55Interestingly, there was a significant rise in publications between 2022 to 2023 from 20 to 37 publications.This period could be best described as the fluctuation stage.Overall, 143 eligible publications on LMS and LA in HEIs were identified from Scopus-indexed sources, comprising conference papers (48.3%), empirical journal articles (35.7%), review articles (8.4%), books (2.1%), and book chapters (5.6%).

Figure 3: Graph showing the number of publications by country for the past 10 years
Source: Author's own compilation Figure 3 shows the contributions to the LMS and LA in HE literature by countries; the map was configured according to the affiliation of the first author.Evidently, as indicated in Figure 3 above, scholars from 22 African countries have authored publications on this phenomenon.However, from these countries, certain African countries have reported a significant number of publications.Notably, Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria, and Ethiopia have the number of publications being 51 (34%), 39 (26%), 18 (12%), and 10 (6%), respectively.Furthermore, other countries were relatively active in this field, as Kenya (5), Tanzania, Sudan, Senegal, Rwanda and Cote D'Ivoire, all having 2 publications each.The rest of the countries each only had a single publication, this included countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Namibia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Libya, Liberia and Angola.

VOSviewer Analysis
To explore the most noteworthy publications in the LMS and LA field within African higher education, this study analysed citation occurrence using the VOSviewer software to compare the impact of the publications.The analysis using VOSviewer was two-fold; first, a threshold of at least twenty citations was set to identify the most frequently cited publications.Secondly, VOSviewer was used to visualise the connections in relation to the co-occurrence of commonly used keywords in LMS and LA fields within the African context.The VOSviewer revealed two networks of keyword co-occurrences displayed in red and green clusters in Figure 4.The red cluster depicts studies that primarily focused on Learning Analytics, whilst the green cluster depicts keywords related to Learning Management Systems.The analysis showed that the most commonly used keywords in relation to Learning Analytics were; big data, big data analytics, deep learning, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics.The second cluster (green) of the keywords shows connections among keywords associated with LMS.The most commonly used keywords were; information management, students, learning management system, data mining and decision making.In addition, a threshold of 15 citations was set using VOSviewer to visualize connections among frequently cited authors, as depicted in Figure 4. Figure 4 illustrates 14 authors divided into 12 clusters.Each cluster comprises authors who focus on similar subject areas and utilize similar research approaches. 56Thus, each cluster represents authors whose research stems from a similar framework or school of thought.Furthermore, the presence of clusters with fewer authors highlights the lack of interrelatedness among authors in the LMS and LA fields.Furthermore, the network connections revealed that only three clusters had authors who were interrelated, namely, the red cluster comprising Iksal and May; the blue cluster comprising Bakhouy and Benhaddou, and the green cluster comprising a single author (i.e.Atayero).Notably, the authors who had the most cited publications, Atayero and Popoola (3 publications each), were not interrelated with other authors.Their research focused mainly on the use of learning analytics for educational support.

Scholarly Recommendations for African Higher Education
A content analysis was conducted to identify the main themes that were pertinent in the recommendations on improving LMS and LA integration in African higher education.Owing to the large number of publications identified, the recommendations were divided into specific themes: student performance, big data analytics, learning behaviour and student learning support.A minimum of 10 Scopus citations was set as a requirement for the recommendations of a publication to be included in any of the four themes.
The student performance theme addressed issues pertaining to the use of LMS and LA to enhance student performance in various fields of study.The most notable scholars in this theme recommend the use of LA to guide student performance evaluation and to predict the likelihood of students dropping out based using predictive analytics techniques.Another significant recommendation is the need to build analytic models that can be used to extract data from LMS and real-time student learning data to improve student performance and provide real-time interventions for identified students with a high drop-out risk.On the other hand, Mwalumbwe and Mtebe recommended the development of a Learning Analytics tool to determine the causality linkage between students' performance and LMS usage.
The second theme that derived from the content analysis based on the recommendations of highly cited authors was the use of big data analytics.In the higher educational context, big data analytics refers to the use of advanced analytical techniques to analyze large volumes of data generated within the LMS.Kalema and Segooa highlight the need for higher education institutions to use various big data analytics tools to predict student performance and achievement outcomes.According to Matsebula and Mnkandla, using big data analytics functions such as predictive modelling can aid institutions in modeling student outcomes forecast, such as the probability of a student dropping out or their performance on future assessments. 57Therefore, it is necessary for administrators and educators in higher education institutions to implement the use of big data analytics to facilitate online learning. 58he third theme derived from the content analysis focuses on student learning behaviour when using online learning systems.The core foundation of depicting student learning behaviour is based on students' login algorithms when using LMS.The main findings under these themes suggest that institutions should encourage educators and instructional designers to use various machine learning programmes and learning analytics to predict student behaviour.According to Kasiroori and Chigwada, students' use of online library resources can show the correlation between the usage of eresources and their academic achievement outcomes. 59Scholars, therefore, recommend the creation of targeted and engaging content to facilitate independent learning.
The fourth and final theme explores the need for student learning support when using LMS.In the context of LMS usage, student learning support refers to the various tools, resources, and services provided within the LMS to help students succeed in their learning endeavours.Student learning support can be provided in numerous ways, such as assessment feedback, access to course materials, communication and collaboration tools, personalised learning paths and tutoring support services.Imhof et al. further recommend the use of predictors and algorithms to determine the various support functions that LMS users might need and have these support functions set up in advance.Precautionary measures should be put in place when implementing the use of predictors and algorithms in LMS. 60

DISCUSSION
Through the bibliometric analysis of Scopus-indexed publications on LMS and LA fields in African Higher education published between 2013 and 2023, this systematic literature depicted the importance of the use of LA in LMS adoption in African higher education.The publication pattern indicates an increase in authorship of LMS and LA-related articles between the period under review (2013 -2023), with the first publication recorded in 2015.This growth pattern indicates the awareness of higher education institutions regarding the associated benefits of LMS adoption for the purposes of teaching and learning.The analysis showed that the majority of publications consisted of conference papers and empirical and review articles.The wide adoption of LMS across higher education institutions in Africa has resulted in an increase in research pertaining to the benefits and challenges associated with the digitisation of learning. 61Among the many studies published between 2013 and 2017 in the LMS field, findings suggest a steady growth of research across Africa, with most studies focusing on the use of Learning Analytics to understand student learning behaviours and the utilization of big data to uncover student learning patterns.Research by Islam and Mahmud indicates that the integration of learning analytics into LM has been shown to enhance the effectiveness of these systems. 62This is particularly evident in the use of machine learning techniques to predict learner performance and engagement. 63Universities are increasingly using LMS-based learning analytics to make informed decisions at various levels, from institutional to course section. 64The occurrence of COVID-19 pandemic played a crucial role in the acceleration of LMS research across educational institutions.The adoption of LMS in African higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant focus research.For example; Mtebe, Fulgence and Gallagher highlight the successful use of LMS, particularly Moodle, in Tanzanian and South African universities, respectively.Badaru and Adu further explore the specific LMS platforms used in South African universities, with a shift towards online teaching and learning during the pandemic. 65urthermore, the bibliometric analysis shows that the most cited authors in LMS and learning analytics were Ayatero and Popoola, with three publications each to their name and Zine-Dine and Addou, with two publications each to their name.Addou and Zine-Dine focused on learning analytics to uncover students' learning patterns as well as the use of big data analytics to predict student performance.It is noteworthy to mention that the most productive authors were based in Morocco and Nigeria, two African countries that are notable for spearheading the digitisation of the learning environment in African education.
Regarding the most productive countries, Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria were the leading productive countries with a significantly higher publication count when compared to other countries.According to Hannache-Heurteloup and Moustaghfir, a large number of universities in Morocco consider e-learning as an essential platform that would aid them in meeting the high demand for higher education and the provision of quality education. 66However, many institutions across Morocco still face numerous barriers pertaining to e-learning therefore slowing down its adoption and use.Similarly, the adoption of LMS platforms among many university students in South Africa remains low.This could also explain the reason why South Africa has numerous publications that investigated factors associated with LMS adoption across higher education institutions. 67The analysis further showed that a large number of African countries did not have a single publication in the LMS and learning analytics fields, further indicating the disparity in access to education across Africa.
In addition, the analysis found that scholars made numerous recommendations for the improvement of LMS adoption in African universities.The adoption of LMS and digital technologies presents several challenges and benefits.Through the content analysis of the recommendations, the recommendations were divided into four main themes; student performance, big data analytics, learning behaviour and student learning support.With regard to student performance, scholars presented numerous discussions on how LMS and learning analytics could be used to enhance student performance and aid drop-out-risk students.This can be achieved through the use of predictive learning and machine learning programs that could be embedded in LMS platforms.Furthermore, universities can use big data analytics to predict student performance and achievement outcomes.Another challenge noted by various scholars is that LMS platforms contain huge amounts of data regarding student behaviour, such as their login patterns, their engagement with content and their frequency of accessing online learning platforms.Universities are encouraged to create targeted content to facilitate online collaborative learning.In addition, universities should ensure that adequate support functions are set up to assist administrators and educators in using learning analytics and other tools to support online learning.

Discussion Summary
This study contributes to the understanding of the complex relationship between LMS engagement and learning analytics in African higher education.This study employed bibliometric analysis to analyse 143 publications from the Scopus database pertaining to Learning Management Systems and Learning Analytics.The increase in publications involving LMS in the past decade across Africa implies that many educational institutions acknowledge the importance of online learning in this era of digital technologies.Most of the active authors in this field were from Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.The number of publications on LMS adoption in a few developing African countries is superior to that of least-developed African countries.Moreover, their research focused on the adoption of LMS to enhance the online learning environment and student performance.The most productive authors in this field were Atayero, Popoola, Zine-Dine and Addou.Their findings highlight the importance of using learning analytics, deep learning, predictive learning and big data analytics to uncover student learning patterns.Most of the publications used the aforementioned keywords to uncover trends pertaining to the use of LMS for online learning purposes.

Implications for future research
The above findings imply that more research needs to be conducted on how higher education institutions in Africa can use LMS and other e-learning platforms to enhance the learning process.Over the past decade, there has been a growth pattern in LMS and learning analytics research conducted by academics in a few African countries.Therefore, it is expected that researchers from other African countries produce empirical research regarding this field.More empirical studies are needed in various study fields pertaining to the use of online learning or blended learning.

CONCLUSION
The incorporation of LMS and learning analytics across higher education institutions in Africa has transformed the learning environment.As universities adopt LMS to facilitate teaching and learning, the interaction and use of LMS by students remains paramount as it contributes to the success of higher educational institutions in Africa and to quality education.The main conclusion drawn from this study is that higher education institutions are leveraging the use of LMS and various learning analytics techniques to uncover student learning behaviour to enhance student performance related to online learning.The use of learning analytics techniques and big data could aid institutions combat challenges that educators and students face during e-learning.With the wide adoption of technology in the educational sector, institutions would need to equip their educators and support staff with online pedagogical methodologies and skills to help facilitate e-learning processes.

Limitations
One of the notable limitations of this study is that this bibliometric analysis only comprised research publications from the Scopus database to answer research questions.Future research could consider exploring other databases such as Web of Science, Emerald Insight, or Springer to explore this research field.Furthermore, the search results of this bibliometric analysis could have been narrowed to a more specific niche through the use of Boolean search functions.In this study, we used the keywords "Learning Management Systems" and "Learning Analytics".Through the use of Boolean keywords search, perhaps other keywords could be added to the search, such as "e-learning", "Predictive Learning", "Big data analytics", and more.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: PRISMA Diagram representing the analysis of the LMS and LA in HEIs Source: Author's own compilation

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: A visualisation map of the co-occurrence of keywords Source: VOSviewer

Table 1 : Research Protocol Search Term (Title, Abstract or Keywords)
: Publication Type Peer-reviewed Academic papers, Conference papers, books, and book chapters.

Table 2 : Summary of the most productive authors and citation count in LMS and LA
Table 2 illustrates the number of publications per author and related citation counts.As ranked by the total number of Scopus citations, the most cited authors are Oussous et al. (617), Mamoshina et al. (312), Jebli et al. (191) and Dhamija (150).The publication with the most citations (617) was published by published by Oussous et al.The study focused on the development of big data technologies pertaining to LMS adoption.The second most cited study in the period under investigation was a study conducted by Mamoshina et al. with 312 citations.This study investigated how emerging blockchain 55 M. A. Makumane, "Students' Perceptions on the Use of LMS at a Lesotho University amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic," African Identities 21, no. 2 (April 3, 2023): 209-26, https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2021.1898930.artificialintelligencetechnologies could help decentralise and accelerate biomedical research.The earliest citation publication was authored by Ofli et al. in 2016 and had 117 citations at the time of the investigation.The most recent publication was authored by Kamble et al. and focused machine learning approach for the prediction of blockchain adoption in the supply chain.This publication had 144 citations at the time of the investigation.Table3depicts the most productive authors on the LMS and LA fields in Africa.According to the analysis of the Scopus database, the most productive authors were Atayero and Popoola from Covenant University, Nigeria and Manchester Metropolitan University, respectively.Both authors at the time of this investigation had a total of 3 publications each.Furthermore, other notable authors who were frequently cited were Zine-Dine and Addou from Morocco, with 2 publications each.The and