“Get us partnerships!” - a qualitative study of Angolan and Mozambican health academics’ experiences with North/South partnerships

Abstract

Background: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 focuses on North/South partnerships for sustainable development. Literature on research partnerships and capacity-building often neglects how these processes are carried out in practice, their social impacts and participants' subjective experiences. Recognizing the increasingly global dimensions of Higher Education Institutions, the University Development and Innovation-Africa project (UDI-A) was designed to train lecturers and administrative staff of Angolan and Mozambican Universities through collaborations with European institutions, aiming at strengthening African academic and social landscapes through knowledge translation and dissemination. This paper examines potential outcomes of UDI-A on participants' academic pathways, investigating the conflict between different imaginaries of capacity-building and partnerships, focusing on how Angolan and Mozambican health sciences researchers experience international collaborations. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven health academics, as well as a focus group discussion involving all participants. These were recorded, fully transcribed, anonymized and coded to identify common themes. A consent form was signed by all participants. Results and discussion: UDI-A was considered innovative, fostering the improvement of pedagogical skills and increasing social entrepreneurship activities. Participants arrived with a specific institutional mandate and believed that the training received should be incorporated into institutional practices to "modernize" these specific Portuguese speaking African Universities and the health sector. The institutional mechanisms put in place to attain this goal, Centres for Academic Development and Innovation ("CADIs"), were considered potential research and development hubs and drivers of academic and societal transformation. Nevertheless, participants shared a sense of asymmetry (infrastructural, financial, in terms of access to information) between them and European trainers. Although this asymmetry was the underlying basis of this capacity-building

SDG partnerships may perpetuate the global North–South divide

“…international funders and development organisations, national policymakers, research institutions, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, and potential partners themselves) need to address challenges posed by existing global inequalities in the design and implementation of partnerships. In particular, the perceptions and capacity-building needs of partners from low-income countries require meaningful consideration 38 .…”

What makes working together work? A scoping review of the guidance on North–South research partnerships

“…Examples of ‘mosquito researchers’ and ‘parachutists’ ( Edejer, 1999 , p. 2) from the global North, who take data and samples for analysis and writing up and make little effort to share results with the community in which the research was conducted, ( Edejer, 1999 ; Binka, 2005 ; Craveiro et al. , 2020 ) are, thankfully, rarely reported in recent literature.…”

“…Northern partners are often disproportionately advantaged over their Southern collaborators in terms of access to resources, including funding, knowledge, expert networks and education and development opportunities, and typically have greater power and influence in all facets of the relationship ( Healey-Walsh et al. , 2019 ; Craveiro et al. , 2020 ).…”

“…Southern partners may be confined to operational roles ( Mony et al. , 2005 ) such as fieldwork coordinators ( Craveiro et al. , 2020 ) in what has been described as a relational structure of ‘subordinate integration’ ( Feld and Kreimer 2019 , p. 166).…”

“…In sum, a range of structural inequalities and historical legacies in the relationship between the global North and South ( Bradley, 2007 ; Craveiro et al. , 2020 ) remain central to the challenges of realizing partnership ideals of equity and mutual benefit ( Jentsch and Pilley 2003 ).…”