Even in harsh times, we must preserve equity in global partnerships

In 2023, the African and the European Unions agreed to put research and innovation at the centre of their quest for a new, strategic partnership.

Alarmed by the vaccine inequality between the two continents during the Covid pandemic, they agreed on the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, a 10-year strategy to develop equitable long-term research and innovation (R&I) collaboration between African and European partners. This is a remarkable endeavour of science diplomacy, the first time that two world regions have an agreed joint programme of topics and approaches to work on together.

The Innovation Agenda influenced, and in turn reinforced, a wider momentum towards research equity between Africa and Europe. In 2023, the Africa Charter was launched with an aim for a “post-equitable” systemic transformation of R&I relations, capturing all actors, from ministries to funders, institutions to researchers.

In that year also, the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities and the African Research Universities Alliance launched Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence, an initiative that has now grown to include more than 400 researchers and their teams in 22 challenge-led transcontinental consortia. Inspired by the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, these collaborations are intended to be equitable and sustained by long-term institutional support.

Funders, too, have made the case to overcome the structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South. The European Research Council (ERC), for instance, dedicates the most recent edition of its magazine to the importance of equity for excellence – in terms of who asks the questions, collects the data and benefits from the results.

Yet the principle of equity has also come under sharp attack, primarily from three directions.

To begin with, the role of science as a tool of geopolitical competition has become much more pronounced, a trend that accelerated sharply with the US administration under Donald Trump. Thus, the US has used science policy not to reduce, but rather to deepen what a recent analysis summed up as “asymmetry, fiscal pressure and dependence”.

One example is bilateral R&I agreements with countries in the Global South that give the US far-reaching access to local health data in return for (relatively limited) US funding. Coupled with the reduction or abolition of US support for global public health, this triggered fundamental shifts in the availability and conditionality of some Global North funding for the Global South.

Second, the acceleration of scientific discoveries, not least through artificial intelligence, has sharply increased differences in science capacities. Data infrastructures are highly concentrated in a few countries, and none of them are in Africa. The Stanford 2026 AI Index Report notes that in 2025, the US hosted more than 5,400 data centres. Germany (529), the UK (523) and China (443) were distant runners-up.

Private investment in AI continues to outpace public investment, with $286 billion (£211.6 billion) invested last year in the US alone, compared with $21 billion in Europe and $12.4 billion in China. This is a story not just about the growing power of the US and China vis-à-vis Europe in AI. It is also about the risk of the Global South being left behind in new technologies, narrowing yet again the questions we ask, the rules that are set and the solutions we develop.

Third, a commitment to equity must also mean, by definition, a serious commitment to help overcome resource inequalities between partners of the Global North and the Global South. But the current geopolitical situation has compelled governments in the Global North to increase significantly their defence spending. Development spending has been among the first casualties, with public spending on universities now also affected negatively. Faced with deteriorating budgets, many universities in the Global North might have become averse to investing in equitable partnerships with the Global South.

But now is precisely the time to double down on equity in global R&I collaboration. If key funders such as the ERC – as well as the Gates Foundation, NovoNordisk and the Wellcome Trust – increasingly emphasise equity as essential to excellent global science collaboration, it is clear that we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift whereby local challenges and local solutions become key to resolving the global questions we ask.

Of course national financial pressures are limiting universities’ room for manoeuvre, but this simply means that we need to experiment with new models and opportunities for collaborations that last beyond the lifetime of individual projects, reinforcing trust, capacity and mutuality.

At a time when knowledge is appropriated for political power, universities must insist on research collaboration as a common public good. When researchers and university presidents from the Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence met earlier this summer to take stock, it was important that they emphasised the importance of doubling down on equity, precisely because of the need for transformative change. And the forthcoming Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, to be held at the University of Cape Town, will be a further important venue to advance this discussion, to see how we can transform our collaborations in a fast-changing environment.

With key funders, the European Commission, the AU Development Agency and many universities on board, it is time to think big and push for a transformation of global R&I collaboration – and to be very clear about the systemic transformation this requires and what this must mean in our everyday practices.

Jan Palmowski is secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.