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Since the establishment of the African Union, it has led and promoted the integration process of science and technology effectively in Africa in many aspects. However, there are no quantitative measurements of the results of scientific and technological cooperation. With the assistance of social network analysis, geospatial analysis, and negative binomial regression analysis, the topological and spatial structures of African scientific research paper cooperation net‐ works are carved based on a sample of 54 African countries' scientific research papers included in the WoS core collection from 2002 to 2019, while the influence of proximity on the structure of cooperation networks is explored. (1) Topologically, the research cooperation thesis output varies widely among African countries. The cooperation is closer among countries, and the cooperation network has higher cohesiveness and better network accessibility, showing typical small-world characteristics. (2) In terms of spatial structure, the spatial differences of the three main centrality indicators are obvious, the spatial morphological characteristics are distinctive, while the strength centrality has a large spatial variation and shows the spatial pattern of "one and only", whereas, and nodal betweenness centrality is distributed in a continuous block, the spatial distribution of nodal degree centrality is relatively uniform. (3)The negative binomial regression reveals that the research potential difference constitutes the driving force of the African scientific collaboration network, and the economic potential, and educational potential differences create barriers to research cooperation between countries. Cultural proximity and social proximity can significantly increase the probability of scientific research cooperation among African countries, while language proximity and geographical proximity are insignificant factors for African coun‐ tries in seeking paper co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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