M”orandum of Understanding between Canada and the International Development Research Centre for Material Science Research in the Lowest-Density Countries
The UN has designated a number of countries as the world’s least-developed countries. They are more vulnerable to economic and environmental catastrophes because of lack of food security, drinking water and electricity. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected economic growth in these countries.
The UN definition states that the average LDCGross national income is less than US$1,088 per capita. The average LDC government invests just 0.21% of gross domestic product in research and development, compared with an average of 0.93% across all countries. The mean number of PhD students per million people in an LDC is 45, as opposed to almost 800 globally. The LDCs produce less scientific publications per capita than all of the other countries.
Researchers in the poorest nations are therefore often dependent on foreign investors for access to scientific equipment, advanced-degree opportunities and training.
The first PhD students in material-sciences research were trained in my laboratory. I have graduated 7 PhDs and have over a dozen PhD students and master’s students. Some people choose to focus on their theoretical projects because we lack state-of-the-art equipment to study up to a PhD level.
We often rely on science diplomacy with other countries to produce our own lab-based science. I created a concept to create a Memorandum of Understanding between our university and those abroad to get equipment and training. I have a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal, Canada, to get access to facilities that are related to data science. Our joint proposal received funding from Canada’s International Development Research Centre. We ask our students to go there for three to six months to conduct research using their equipment. Four of my students have gone to Montreal, the most recent graduate was in November. It is sometimes difficult to set up MOUs between two universities, however, especially when one is English-speaking and the other is French-speaking. There are two documents drawn up in each language.
Another strategy is to help the student secure funding, as well as a place in a collaborator’s lab. There is no MOU between our institutions, but the student is fully funded. For example, I worked with a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to develop a research project into 2D materials for renewable energy or storage and then selected students from all over the globe to apply for Faculty for the Future scholarships from the Schlumberger Foundation. I’ve had one postdoc and a PhD student get these fellowships to do the work at Drexel. It is not common for researchers in the region to use these training strategies if they have already built an international network.
The World Academy of Science gave me a year’s worth of money to build and buy equipment for my lab. Next, I got a two-year Future Leaders grant from the Royal society, UK, and the african academy of sciences. This aided me in sending my students and myself to attend conferences around the world. I have another TWAS grant for US$35,000 to buy equipment and chemicals, and attend conferences. Global organizations need to know that although it is important to fund students in Africa and other developing regions, it is also crucial to channel funding to supervisors so they can maintain a steady stream of PhD students.
Source: Four global-south researchers making cross-border collaborations count
Water quality in the Tonlé Sapa lake of southeast Asia: a research-based approach to improve environmental conditions for people and the government of Cambodia
I started my PhD in 2020 to focus on water quality in the Tonlé Sap, the largest and most productive lake in southeast Asia. Tonlé Sap is very important here in Cambodia, as well as Thailand and Vietnam, because so much food production occurs in and around it. Increased use ofchemicalfertilizer for rice production in the area may be a factor in why fish may be declining. When additional water use upstream robs the lake of water, the oxygen levels drop and the fish become less able to survive.
I applied for funding from a programme that is supported by the US Department of State to bring together early-career scientists in the four countries that depend on the Mekong River. The funding gave me the means to go to New Orleans to see other scientists’ work on the same issues. I’ve learned how to adapt different designs to fit my study area with new field techniques and experience there.
Our government needs scientific research results. Other countries are free to do whatever they choose with the river because there is no evidence of the downstream impacts. The amount of water received from the lake can be reduced by dam built far away from Cambodia. The lake depends on the Mekong for 50% of it’s input and this increases the concentration of nutrients.
I hope the NexGen programme will help me gain experience in how to sustain research projects over the long term. Often, we get funding for equipment, but then there are so few people who are trained to use the equipment that it can sit idle after people graduate or the project ends. We need funds to keep a flow of students and the knowledge of equipment in the lab. It is the best part of the company that they support researchers in 4 countries along themekong, which helps us to create cross-border projects to improve environmental conditions for everyone.
The South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies provides research-based policy recommendations on social environmental issues to local, provincial and federal governments. We have around 20 staff, it is not a big organization. We also have part-time colleagues who are faculty members at universities abroad, in locations such as Sweden, Australia and the United States.
In Nepal, it can be hard to work with international partners due to restrictions on sending money out of the country. Even if we lead a project, and the grant funding comes to our account, it can be difficult to transfer it to fund collaborators abroad. The government does not have a lot of funding for research. Students and researchers who want to do social science are not likely to have many opportunities. Without international scholarships, PhD training would not have been possible for many of us.
A consistent challenge we face is that grant calls are driven by a global agenda, which does not always match local contexts in the developing world. For example, forest conservation is essential, but there are real-life challenges connected with increasing forest coverage, such as human–wildlife conflicts and food–water insecurity. These needs are too local to be considered by funders or northern colleagues. Language limitations are also a common problem across the global south. As a result, sometimes the northern researcher will do the final writing of proposals and editing of publications. One challenge is that we, as a policy institute, want to emphasize the empirical findings, but the northern partner can have different priorities, such as pushing new analytical frameworks and decision-making tools. We have also experienced cases in which contributions of the global south are considered secondary compared with the theoretical arguments led by the northern partners.
International collaboration in the field of neurology in a developing country: Is South Africa a ‘global north’ or a Latin American country?
I graduated last year from the State University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince, the only free public medical school in the country. Five years of medical school is one of the requirements for the seven-year programme. One year of internship at the State University of Haiti Hospital is another requirement. There is far more student interest that can be trained. There were only 125 spots for applicants when I applied. Hospitals in Haiti can cost around 200,000 Haitian Goules per year for a private school of medicine. It is more than most Haitians can afford and is more than the country has a net per capita annual income of. At most, maybe 5–10% of the students get training outside the country, because there is no financial aid.
My family helped me pay for my trip to the United States in May to get experience in neurology. I reached out to a colleague at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, who helped me to connect with faculty members working on stroke research. I passed the first of three exams to receive a US medical licence in August and in October, I travelled to Kentucky to volunteer at the University of Louisville’s neurology department, which has a research programme on spinal cord injury. I will most likely go to Miami for more experience at another hospital in order to prove my qualifications for residency at one of the top training hospitals in the United States. After I finish a residency, in about five years, I want to take my expertise back to Haiti.
International collaboration is an essential force in science. But the nature and balance of partnerships often determines how beneficial they are to individuals, institutions and societies. This is true in collaborations with the global north and south.
There are caveats. The ‘global north’ and ‘global south’ are categories without definitive boundaries, so World Bank income groups were used to split countries. This inevitably leads to some arguable categorizations: South Africa is an upper middle-income country so is a ‘global north’ country in the data, for instance. For most of Latin America, the same is true. Data from health-sciences journals, recently added to the Nature Index, were not available for analysis (the supplement features separate data from the Digital Science Dimensions database to broaden subject scope).
