This article explores equity with respect to South-North partnerships in the context of education research involving scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on large-scale bibliometric analysis of over 1,000 publications published in English between 2010 and 2018, it finds that participation in such partnerships favours a relatively small number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These collaborations appear to be reproducing gender imbalances in authorship. Complemented by interviews with 31 researchers based in the region, it further identifies examples of asymmetrical relationships alongside more positive partnerships and practices. Scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa were more likely to view partnerships initiated by researchers based in the region as equitable.
This article combines large-scale bibliometric analysis of publications on education by researchers based in sub-Saharan Africa with researchers' accounts of their priorities and practice. Patterns in the thematic foci of the research from 48 countries in the region are considered from the perspective of international policy statements (the Education Sustainable Development Goal and the African Union's Agenda 2063), alongside analysis of funding, coauthorship, and citations. We find a large number of publications by these scholars in reputable journals that merit greater scholarly engagement. Furthermore, evidence presented in this article challenges claims about the dominance of Northern research agendas in sub-Saharan Africa.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) and the Jacobs Foundation; the research participants who generously gave their time; Rui da Silva for his work cataloging Portuguese language research; and the anonymous peer reviewers and others who provided valuable feedback on this article, including participants at CIES 2018, BAICE 2018, and colleagues at the REAL Centre,
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