How equitable are South-North partnerships in education research? Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• South-North research partnerships
• sustainable development goals
• sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgments

This study was made possible through funding from Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) and Jacobs Foundation. The African Education Research Database was developed by the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge and is freely available here: https://essa-africa.org/AERD. For further details of the project, visit: https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real/researchthemes/highereducation/mappingeducation/

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In specifying the geographical remit, the database follows the World Bank classification of sub-Saharan African countries (n.d.) with the addition of Djibouti and exception of South Africa. South Africa has a different publication profile to other countries in the region, with 3.5 times more outputs than Nigeria, the second most prolific country (Mitchell and Rose 2018). As the motivation for the database was to raise the visibility of research in sub-Saharan Africa, the decision was taken to exclude publications by South African researchers from it.

2. In addition to publication in international education journals, such as Comparative Education, Comparative Education Review, Compare and the International Journal of International Development, articles included in the analysis are also published in a wide range of other journals notably related to development studies, such as Development Policy Review, the Journal of Development Studies, Journal of International Development, and Journal of African Economies, amongst others.

3. Searches of Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (https://www.rcaap.pt/)

and Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (http://bdtd.ibict.br/vufind/) were conducted by Rui da Silva (Centre of African Studies, University of Porto).

4. A search of the specialist French academic database https://www.cairn.info/using the same search criteria identified yielded only 17 studies, which was in fact lower than the number identified in Scopus and Web of Science.

5. For example, using Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers (https://beallslist.weebly.com/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jacobs Foundation; Education Sub-Saharan Africa.