Fostering a New Era of North-South Exchange and South-South Collaboration

By Alyson Marks

With the limitations of in-person engagement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, TReNDS’ recently launched several member sub-groups related to key challenges within the data ecosystem for members to discuss, debate, and work towards developing solutions. This blog is part of a series that details the issues that the sub-groups are exploring.

Source: SmartAfrica.org

While the global landscape has rapidly shifted over the past several years, it’s no secret that countries from the Global South continue to be under-represented in research, often marginalized, and in some cases, even exploited. These issues have been compounded by a lack of domestic funding, access to technology, data sovereignty challenges, and the legacy of data collection by the Global South and analysis by the Global North. Fortunately, the power dynamics are beginning to change.

In recent years, South-South collaboration has been particularly active in the data space, with more open source tools and new data sources, including citizen science, being generated at the local-level to inform decision-making. To help bolster this shift, TReNDS’ sub-group on North-South Exchange is working to crowd in more voices from the Global South as well as encouraging more documentation, discussion, and diffusion of lessons learned to catalyze South-South and triangular data collaborations. Recent conversations and members’ research have underscored the significance of involving local stakeholders in projects from the onset, customizing needs based on the local context, and developing local communities of practice to ensure long-term sustainability.

Emerging Lessons

• Listening to Local Leaders and Working with Local Stakeholders

In a recent SciData Conference session co-hosted by TReNDS, expert member, Samantha Custer detailed findings from the 2021 Listening to Leaders Survey (LTL), a large-scale survey of 7,000 leaders from over 140 countries on attributes they look for in useful data and evidence, the problems they most want to solve, and what they value in their development partners. The survey has been a valuable tool in understanding the needs of leaders in the Global South.

Custer highlighted, “We often turn to experts who reside in the Global North, but when you think about where the ‘rubber meets the road’ and who makes determinations of what policies are prioritized or what reforms are implemented and whether data is used or not, it really boils down to understanding, listening, and learning from leaders in low and middle-income countries. But we don’t often do that because it’s very difficult to reach these people and to aggregate these voices in a meaningful way.”

In addition, local stakeholder involvement for projects in these countries has proven critical to successful collaborations. A key survey result from LTL revealed that development partners who performed best worked with local stakeholders to target resources and expertise.

• Adapting To and Understanding the Local Context

When embarking on data collaborations in the Global South, developing local communities of practice and understanding the local context is necessary for success. Moreover, we cannot assume that every country in the Global South faces the same types of challenges.

Kanza Ahmed, a Consultant in the UK Health Security Agency, shared her experiences working alongside expert member, Virginia Murray, to develop 300+ hazard information profiles for informing risk reduction and management strategies to supplement the UNDRR/ISC Hazard Definition & Classification Review: Technical Report. The pilot project involved evaluating surveillance systems for particular hazards chosen by countries and working with these countries to understand the gaps in their surveillance systems. Critical to the project’s success was adapting to and understanding the local country context.

Ahmed explained, “Rather than taking a good statistical definition from a high-income country and applying it across the world…we [worked] with countries in the Global South to ensure that they were empowered to be able to define what is the appropriate definition [of the hazard] based on the data and statistics they have available to them.”

• Building Stronger Relationships Between Data Producers and Users Across Government

The LTL survey results also demonstrated the importance of fit-for-purpose partnerships and the ability to contextualize data to respond to local realities and priorities. Custer shared that 60% of leaders surveyed valued projects that were adapted to the local context, aligned with the national strategy, and were iteratively adapted with local stakeholders. She believes that this points to the need for stronger relationships across government with individuals who are producing, disseminating, and ultimately using the data.

Customizing systems for local-use and bridging local relationships between data producers and users across the Global South is also important for catalyzing more impactful collaborations. Andrea Gardeazábal, a researcher within the CGIAR partnership, described how she intentionally co-develops her research with local partners and intermediate stakeholders in the field to understand local aspects of the data collection process and to support more inclusive agricultural transformation. By doing so, she’s been able to build more stakeholder consensus in Mexico and Colombia around food security, nutrition, and health across government.

More Than a Voice

While the above examples highlight encouraging efforts to crowd in more voices from the Global South, recent experiences at COP26 and other instances demonstrate that more must be done. To spur the technological innovation necessary for advancing the data for development agenda and progress on the SDGs, the Global South deserves “more than a voice, but a vote.”