Saralees Nadarajah (University of Manchester UK), Samuel Manda (Univ. of Pretoria, South Africa), and Queensley C. Chukwudum (Univ. of Uyo, Nigeria) write:
International research collaborations are widely heralded as essential mechanisms for addressing global challenges in health, agriculture, and development. Funding schemes from major agencies in Europe and North America routinely mandate partnerships between institutions in high-income countries and those in low- and middle-income countries, with Africa featuring prominently in these frameworks. The stated goals are noble: to combine diverse expertise, build local capacity, and ensure that research addresses the needs of populations most affected by the problems under study.
Yet beneath this rhetoric of partnership lies a reality that many African researchers know but rarely voice publicly. The structure and implementation of these collaborations frequently perpetuate the very inequities they claim to address. This commentary synthesizes firsthand testimonies from researchers across Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other nations, alongside observations from international partners based in Europe, North America and Australia. These accounts reveal patterns of intellectual marginalization, financial exploitation, and data extraction that undermine local capacity, scientific integrity, and sustainable development in Africa.
The Leadership Paradox:
A leading researcher in Cameroon describes a scenario that has become distressingly familiar. An African scientist conceives a study based on local epidemiological data and community needs, designs the methodology, and drafts the proposal. However, because European institutions often hold “fiduciary responsibility” or maintain existing relationships with funders, a European researcher is named the Principal Investigator. The African originator of the project is relegated to Co-Investigator or, worse, Field Coordinator.
This structural demotion has tangible consequences. Academic standing, career progression, and future funding prospects all depend on holding primary investigator status. In one instance, the researcher recalls applying through the French Agency for HIV Research, only to discover that the online portal automatically designated the French partner as lead. All communication and reporting flowed through that partner, despite the researcher having developed the concept and written the proposal. Such systemic bias facilitates intellectual appropriation and systematically disenfranchises African innovators before a single data point is collected.
Data Extraction and Epistemic Injustice:
A researcher from South Africa highlights another dimension of the problem: the fate of data collected on African soil. Valuable health system data gathered in countries like Malawi is often owned and controlled by foreign institutions, frequently in the United States. Personnel from organizations such as USAID, based in Africa but accountable to headquarters abroad, manage data collection and transfer it to US institutions. This is justified by perceived limitations in local analytical capacity—real, or manufactured by years of underinvestment.
Once the data leaves the continent, so does control over its interpretation. African contributors are frequently excluded from authorship and intellectual outcomes. The data generated by African communities, collected by African field staff, and describing African populations is analyzed in, for example, Boston or Seattle, and published in journals that African institutions cannot afford to access. This cycle produces what scholars have termed epistemic injustice: the systematic exclusion of African perspectives from the production of knowledge about Africa itself.
The Financial Architecture of Inequality:
A researcher from Zimbabwe draws attention to the financial asymmetries embedded in grant structures. On a typical USAID grant of one million dollars, twenty-five percent may automatically remain with the US partner institution before any project activities begin. This overhead covers administrative costs, but it also represents resources that never reach the communities the research is meant to benefit.
Beyond institutional overhead, the pattern of travel by Northern partners further depletes project funds. Repeated visits by teams from Europe or North America to African partner countries, often involving luxury accommodations and per diems calculated at international rates, consume budgets that could otherwise support local salaries, equipment, or infrastructure. These expenditures are justified as essential for “monitoring” and “capacity building,” yet they rarely result in sustained transfer of skills or resources.
Compounding this is the structure of salary allocations. When funding is calculated as a percentage of full-time equivalent (FTE) salary, African researchers receive far less than their Northern counterparts due to lower base salaries, despite often undertaking the majority of fieldwork and community engagement. A senior African researcher may receive a fraction of the salary supplement allocated to a junior European colleague, simply because their home institution’s pay scales reflect local economic realities. The result is a system where those doing the most labor-intensive work are compensated least, while those who visit occasionally draw the largest salaries.
Breaches of Trust and Accountability Failures:
An African researcher now based in the UK recounts the experience of a junior colleague who entered a partnership with a UK professor on a grant requiring collaboration between low- and middle-income country and high-income country researchers. The agreement was straightforward: samples would be sent to the UK for processing, and the data would be returned for analysis by the African colleague, who would be first author on the resulting publications. But the data was never shared. When the African colleague inquired, the professor claimed to be too busy to process the request. Months passed; eventually the professor unilaterally assigned the data to a UK-based student for analysis. Later, the professor secured additional funding based on this same data without informing or including the African partner. Such breaches of trust are not isolated incidents. They are cited repeatedly by African researchers as reasons for growing restrictions on sample sharing and deepening mistrust in international partnerships. When agreements are disregarded without consequence, the foundation of collaboration erodes.
Tokenism and Superficial Engagement:
A researcher from South Africa identifies a pattern of tokenism that pervades many collaborative proposals. African researchers are included to satisfy funder requirements for “local presence” or “demonstration of African partnership.” Their names and institutional affiliations lend credibility to applications, yet they may be unaware of the full proposal details, the budget breakdown, or even the grant’s approval status.
Once funding is secured, this superficial engagement becomes apparent. African partners may be excluded from decision-making meetings, denied access to project data, or informed of activities after they have already been planned. Meanwhile, Northern partners use the resources to conduct activities in Africa that primarily benefit their own careers or, in some cases, include what can only be described as holiday-like visits dressed in the language of research. This dynamic transforms genuine partnership into exploitation of African credentials without granting African voice.
Overarching Patterns:
These testimonies, drawn from diverse countries and research contexts, reveal interconnected structural issues. Funding portals and fiduciary arrangements systematically place Northern partners in lead roles, eroding African leadership before projects begin. Data extracted from Africa is controlled and analyzed abroad, limiting local access and undermining capacity building. Grant funds are disproportionately absorbed by Northern administrative costs, salaries, and travel, limiting resources for local implementation. Agreements on authorship, data sharing, and roles are frequently disregarded without accountability. And African researchers are used instrumentally to fulfill grant criteria without meaningful engagement or decision-making power.
The consequences extend beyond individual grievances. These practices impede the development of robust African research ecosystems, perpetuating dependency and reinforcing neocolonial dynamics in global science. Talented researchers, seeing limited prospects for fair recognition and advancement, may leave the continent entirely, contributing to brain drain. Those who remain may become cynical about international collaboration, viewing it as an extractive enterprise rather than a genuine partnership.
A Path Toward Equity:
Addressing these systemic inequities requires fundamental changes at multiple levels. Funding agencies must revise their application and management systems to require and enforce equitable leadership. Principal Investigator status should be based on intellectual contribution, not institutional location. Portals must not auto-assign lead roles based on Northern headquarters, and all partners should have transparent access to full proposals, budgets, and communications.
Robust data governance agreements must become mandatory in all collaborative grants. These should guarantee that data collected in Africa remains accessible to African partners, that analysis plans are jointly developed, and that authorship policies are agreed in writing before projects begin. Funders must monitor compliance and impose consequences for violations. Grant budgeting must be restructured to ensure equitable distribution. This includes capping administrative overheads for Northern institutions, allocating funds based on real costs rather than FTE percentages that entrench salary disparities, and prioritizing budget lines that build local infrastructure and capacity. Travel expenses should be justified and minimized.
Ethical training and accountability mechanisms require strengthening. All grant participants should complete training on equitable partnership and anti-colonial research practices. Clear, independent channels for reporting grievances must exist, with meaningful consequences for unethical behavior, including eligibility restrictions for future funding. Finally, funders must actively support African-led research agendas, creating grant schemes exclusive to African institutions, increasing African representation on review panels, and investing in local research management capacity to enable African institutions to lead consortia effectively.
In Conclusion:
The patterns described here are widespread and damaging. They represent not the failures of individual researchers or institutions, but the logical outcomes of systems designed without equity as a primary consideration. Addressing them requires more than rhetorical commitments to decolonization or partnership. It requires fundamental restructuring of how research is funded, governed, and evaluated. Only then can global research transform from an extractive enterprise into a genuinely collaborative endeavor that respects African intellectual contributions, promotes local capacity, and serves the priorities and peoples of Africa.