15. North-South University Development Cooperation: Towards more Equitable Academic Partnerships

One of the challenges of North-South relations relates to building meaningful and more equal collaborations in contexts of stark power disparities. Following the demise of colonialism in the mid-20th century, international development aid established itself as a cornerstone of the asymmetrical terms of engagement between the so-called Global North and Global South. Seventy years later, agendas and thematic areas, funding structures, and project design remain mostly donor-centred, following Northern institutions’ interests rather than Southern priorities and often leading to interventions that do not align with the ever-contextual needs and preferences of the target communities (Banks et al. 2024; Groves and Hinton 2004). Such in-built hierarchies and power imbalances have come under increasing scrutiny in the 21st century, resulting in calls to rethink North-South cooperation, whether framed as ‘development’ or otherwise (Baud et al. 2019; Melber et al. 2024). In changing geopolitical circumstances, and reflecting the need to address complex global development challenges, ideas of ‘partnership’ and ‘mutual benefit’ have become central to reform initiatives tackling North-South cooperation, from the 2011 Busan High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to Goal 17 of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda (‘Partnership for the Goals’).
These dynamics are evident in university cooperation between Northern and Southern higher education institutions. In many African contexts, modern higher education institutions were first conceived and shaped by colonial administrations and were later consolidated through external funding from various sources tied to international development cooperation: western bilateral donors and foundations, Eastern Bloc countries, multilateral institutions and, most recently, South-South cooperation (Teferra 2014; Arocena et al. 2015). Today, the dominant structure of funding schemes originating in the North tends to position Southern partners in a subsidiary position, with researchers in the North as the dominant decision-makers and those in the South reduced to on-the-ground data collection (Carbonnier and Kontinen 2014; Molosi-Francea and Makoni 2020). This much was acknowledged by a recent UNESCO report on international aid for tertiary education, which suggested that academic spaces can and should be mobilized to change our “approach and mentality around the meaning of true [North-South] partnerships” (Galán-Muros et al. 2022, p. 54).
Within the European Union (EU), international cooperation in the field of higher education is a priority, responding to the goals of promoting education excellence and addressing global changes. While educational cooperation between European Member States has a long history, expanding its international dimension is increasingly prioritized in EU educational funding streams (EEA 2024). Similarly, European countries and their development agencies have been highlighting the importance of academic collaborations as part of their foreign policy and development strategies. In both Portugal and Spain, universities are recognised as key actors in international cooperation, as observed in the new Portuguese Strategy for Development Cooperation (ECP 2030), which highlights the role of higher education institutions and partnerships in reaching its goals centred around human development, and as noted by the Spanish Observatory of University Cooperation for Development, launched in 2008 with support from the Spanish international development agency. Finally, university development cooperation also speaks to the African Union’s commitment, stated in its strategic 2063 Agenda, to develop an African knowledge society based on research and innovation, to various SDGs (SDG 4, SDG 9.5, SDG 17), and to the joint statement of African and European Universities on the role of higher education and university partnerships in development cooperation (AAU and EUA 2010; ARUA-The Guild 2020). And yet, university-facilitated international development cooperation is little explored as a modality for aid or as an object of academic research (Arocena at al. 2015; Galan-Muros et al. 2022), and is currently fragmented to the extent that there is little agreement regarding the choice of term to describe this type of activities (Pollet and Huyse 2019, p.16).
Taking the cue from the abovementioned recommendations for building more equitable North-South partnerships and different to the developmentalist logic of the North operating on the South, as well as building on critical development research and postcolonial studies’ critique of knowledge production systems (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017), the proposed panel will explore lessons learned, challenges, and paths for improving North-South university-facilitated International Development Cooperation. Such collaborations, we argue, have the potential not only to promote important development goals both directly and through cascading effects, but also to advance science by exposing epistemological biases and enriching scholarly perspectives on ‘development’ itself. The panel will mainly focus on Euro-African university relations. It will welcome lessons from case studies, as well as conceptual presentations addressing the intricacies and complexities of North-South entanglements both short-term and long-term, from across the social sciences and from scholars engaged in applied research (e.g., related to health or agriculture). Presenters will share experiences from collaborative initiatives, such as traditional research collaborations as well as student, and staff exchanges, but also more innovative formats, such as collaborative co-learning workshops, student-centred modes of collaboration such as project-based learning, or open-ended, experimental explorations through academic “social labs”. Presenters may also focus on the bureaucratic sides of university-facilitated international development cooperation, dwelling for example on institutional or governmental vetting processes. Special attention will be drawn to possible tensions between the imperative of more equitable collaboration and the bureaucratic hinderances of de facto funding structures and requirements, such as the (non-)involvement of (co-)PIs from the South. While presentations may touch on a range of North-South contexts, experiences involving Iberian universities and their African counterparts are particularly welcome.
This panel is inspired by ERC Proof of Concept AfDevLabs (currently in submission), which builds on a project-based learning format to develop a collaborative lab around the traces of bygone Euro-African development interventions. Should the Proof of Concept application be successful (results due June 2024, commencement expected in September 2024), the project’s academic collaborators in Europe and Africa will be encouraged to submit presentations to the panel. These international collaborators’ potential for participation in the panel, which will align well with a planning project meeting in Lisbon in January 2025, will invigorate the debate about equitable modes of university collaboration by anchoring the discussion within a new and experimental North-South academic collaboration initiative.