Participants came from near and far. When conference moderator Yolanda Sylvana Rother asked the audience where they lived, the answers ranged from the immediate vicinity of Prenzlauer Berg to countries as diverse as China, Mozambique, and Brazil. The Berlin Center of Global Engagement (BCGE) of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) had convened a diverse group of international experts to Berlin to discuss one of the most pressing issues within global academic cooperation: inequality.

The BCGE serves as an interface for cooperation with the Global South within the BUA, and as a platform to advance academic freedom, science diplomacy as well as regional and country-specific expertise in BUA’s four partner institutions Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin.

Günter Ziegler, president of Freie Universität Berlin and spokesperson for the Berlin University Alliance, kicked off the conference by pointing out that the BCGE started out with the intention of helping to balance the global science system. “We want to enter into a truly mutual exchange,” Ziegler said. “We aim at truly understanding what the perspective from the Global South really looks like and how our relations can be taken further.”

Ina Czyborra, Senator for Higher Education and Research, Health, and Long-Term Care of the city of Berlin, who delivered a welcome address, highlighted the significant progress that Berlin has made in confronting its colonial past and addressing its present responsibilities. Czyborra said. “Support structures like the BCGE are urgently needed to help researchers from Berlin avoid the cultural pitfalls of colonial attitude. As part of our Berlin University Alliance, the BCGE lifts cooperation between the Global North and the Global South to the institutional level, rather than relying on individual peer-to-peer relationships. This is a clear sign that the Berlin science and innovation ecosystem is in it for the long haul.”

The keynote lecture was delivered by Patrício Langa, Professor of sociology and higher education at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique and Senior Research Fellow at University Alliance Ruhr. Langa gave an inspiring overview on the current situation of African universities in the global science system. He presented evidence on the prevailing imbalances and elucidated the historical roots that gave rise to them—from the colonial legacy and neoliberal development schemes to a new era of more equitable knowledge partnerships with the Global North, which has been developing over the past 10 to 15 years.

Langa presented revealing data: African universities represent 9.1 percent of all universities worldwide but the continent contributes only 2.4 percent to the global production of scientific publications. Huge barriers remain on the way towards more equity, for example when it comes to publications. Not only are most publishing houses based in the Global North but standards are still defined there and concrete research collaborations are often excluding African partners or reducing them to data collectors. “From the perspective of African universities there is an urgent demand for a transformative shift in the engagement with the global research community,” said Langa. “We need a new mindset, a robust policy framework and strategies like the ‘Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations’.”

With Patrício Langa’s analysis as a backdrop, the invited experts exchanged their thoughts in four thematic panel discussions. "The setting was highly international and interdisciplinary, which allowed for the consideration of a multitude of perspectives—a goal that the BCGE strives to achieve," stated Romain Faure, the BCGE coordinator.

In the first panel discussion “Global Challenges and Sustainable Development Goals: A Defining Agenda for International Collaborative Research?”, experts from China, Brazil, South Africa, and Germany exchanged their thoughts on the universal claim of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their role in gearing international research cooperation towards solving global problems. Hanzhi Yu, Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, observed that SDG-related research is on the rise in China. She also expressed the hope that the SDGs could serve as a common language across political differences in the global system.

Angela Million, a professor of Urban Design and Urban Development at the Technische Universität Berlin reported from her experience with SDGs in international collaboration as a useful tool to foster interdisciplinary cooperation and define a common goal, which then gets adapted to local circumstances. Euclides de Mesquita Neto, researcher at Universidad de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil and Executive Secretary of the Global Research Council (GRC), stated that research financing framed by the SDGs also needs to leave enough space for fundamental research of the “unknown unknowns”. Patricio Langa raised concerns about the universality of the SDGs and their power to enforce a research agenda while silencing other perspectives by not funding them. "African universities are not involved in deciding on the research objectives, which makes it difficult to conduct critical research," says Langa. "We therefore need to develop future SGDs much more collaboratively."

During the second panel on “Thinking the World from and with the South”, the researchers Adenike Akinsemolu, Phoebe Sanchez, and Robin Celikates stressed the importance of addressing global knowledge asymmetries and highlighted the negative effects of the current unbalance on politics, economy, and society.

Phoebe Sanchez, a Filipino sociologist and historian at the Consensus and Conflict Department of the Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (DeZIM) in Berlin, pointed to the continuity of coloniality. The neo-colonial order, she said, does not allow the countries of the Gobal South to determine the production of goods locally and also determines the orientation of the research landscape. Sanchez demanded for reorienting research in the Global South to reflect its own interests.

Robin Celikates, Professor of Social Philosophy and Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin, called for a critical examination of attitudes in the Global North. "We need self-criticism. We need to expose ourselves to unpleasant truths. Germany, for example, is not good at accepting its colonial responsibility. This is difficult to understand for many researchers from the South." Celikates asked researchers in the Global North to be open to knowledge and experiences from the South, for example in confronting autocratic attacks on critical research.

Microbiologist Adenike Adebukola Akinsemolu from Afe Babalola University in Nigeria and the University of Birmingham demanded an inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems to counter asymmetries in the production of knowledge—and find local solutions to local problems. Akinsemolu, a 2024 Alexander von Humboldt Residency Programme Fellow, also conceived the digital photography exhibition “The Women of Aiyetoro: Resilience in the Face of Climate Change”, which invited the conference’s audience into a visual exploration of local knowledge systems and resilience of indigenous women in Nigeria in the wake of climate change and historical marginalization.

In the afternoon, the knowledge exchange continued in the panel “Health Innovation with the Global South”. Experts discussed the need to shift the perspective from developing health innovations for the Global South to developing health innovations with the Global South—and enter a mutual learning process. “We must see the South as a place that contributes to the global knowledge pool with its innovation,” said John Ouma-Mugabe, Professor of Science and Innovation Policy at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Malek Bajbouj, a professor of psychiatry and affective neurosciences and director of the Global Mental Health Section at the department of psychiatry at Charité, gave an example of how mutual learning from the Global South has worked impressively. In the Syrian civil war, he flew to Jordan to help traumatized refugees there. "We flew back with a suitcase full of ideas," he recalls. Local experts had already come up with useful strategies that helped Bajbouj later to deal with refugees arriving in Germany.

Daniel Opoku, Research Associate at the Department of Healthcare Management at the Technical University of Berlin, gave another example from Ghana, where he worked in a project that was meant to bring health insurance to the population. The team wanted to introduce a health app in Ghana which had successfully been implemented in Madagascar. „The authorities in Ghana showed us that there was already an app that could be used to pay. So why develop an additional solution from scratch?" said Opoku. His team adapted the project, convinced the financing institution, and handed the project over to the stakeholders in Ghana. “That was the breakthrough. Today, millions of people have access to the healthcare system as a result."

The last panel of the day “Between Transnational Dialogue and Geo-political Challenges: How Do Universities Navigate through Times of Crisis?” focused on geo-political changes and their effect on research collaboration. Isabelle Haubrecht, project coordinator at the China Competence Training Centre (CCTC) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, reported on growing concerns in Germany about cooperation with Chinese companies and universities while China’s role in the global scientific landscape is constantly rising. "The fears range from 'China is threatening to steal my idea' to 'China is technologically superior'. In both cases, risk aversion leads to opportunity aversion," Haubrecht said, asking for breaking down barriers and building lasting relationships with Chinese researchers.

The Moroccan policy advisor and Tertiary Education Expert Jamil Salmi, who is part of the International Advisory Board of the BUA, offered a way forward for researchers in situations of political crisis by keeping up contacts and cooperation with individual researchers, even if ties to governmental institutions need to be cut.

Layla Al-Zubaidi, Head of the International Policy Division at Heinrich Böll Stiftung, pointed to the difficulties that international conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bring to international collaboration and the reception of the German posture on the conflict, which is contested by many countries in the Global South. Yolanda Sylvana Rother, the main moderator of the conference, found the appropriate closing words: "I am happy to be in a room that can withstand tension."

The intense panel debates were suspended by the initial silence of an artistic highlight that was meant to make participants not only think, but also feel. The performance of the theater project “Hidden Research” impressively encouraged the audience to reflect on what it means when scientists must hide their research because academic freedom is not a given. The BCGE developed it in cooperation with the BUA project Co2libri and art director Aldo Spahiu.

The conference day culminated in the signing ceremony of the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations and a round table discussion on its significance and implementation “We believe that the Africa Charter can serve as a pivotal catalyst by fostering transformative changes in research collaborations not only in Africa but far beyond,” said Julia von Blumenthal, president of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin who signed the Charter on behalf of the BUA as one of the first institutions in Germany.

The Charter, which was launched in July 2023 in Windhoek, Namibia, has been co-created by Africa's major higher education constituencies and bodies. So far, it has been signed by more than 100 institutions including universities in Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Australia as well as major University networks and learned societies. “The Charter stresses the need to think 'beyond' equitable partnerships in determining what equity in research collaborations is for, what equity, then, needs to entail—and how it can be ensured,” said Isabella Aboderin, Chair in Africa Research and Partnerships and Director of the Perivoli Africa Research Centre at the University of Bristol.

The document brings forward ten principles confronting the multiple layers of power imbalances like for example the dominance of European epistemologies and theories, in research metrics, and concrete asymmetries in collaboration practices such as the division of labour, decision making and access to rewards. It also formulates six aspirations that call for concrete adjustments in collaboration practices, for example change in policy and regulatory frameworks of Higher Education Institutions and guidelines to make sure that a more equitable approach to science cooperation with Africa will become a standard practice. ”It is a matter of advancing Africa's political and economic aspirations, of reducing inequalities between regions and countries, but also of enriching our collective global scholarship and find potent solutions to the global and the local challenges that we face collectively,“ said Aboderin.

One of the challenges discussed during the round table discussion was how to transform discourse into action to implement the Charter’s aspirations—and engage more partners. The need for the signatories to define road maps by reviewing current collaboration practices as well as gaps to fill was pointed out. The discussants agreed that there is an urgent need to build up the necessary structures to operationalize the Charter and disseminate its message throughout all disciplines.

“The next step for us is to integrate the principles of the Africa Charter in funding schemes for collaboration with partners in the so-called Global South,” said BCGE project lead Florian Kohstall. “We will include it into our system of reviewing projects and highlight examples of best practice to engage into a joint learning process with our partners.”

Among the speakers, there was confidence that more equitable partnerships in the global science system will result in a win-win for all by allowing for new perspectives and mutual learning processes — if they do not stay confined to documents. „Implementation now requires personal, institutional and also political commitments and changes in practice,” said Beate Kampmann, director of the Institute of International Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin, who moderated the final discussion. “We are excited about the necessary co-creation opportunities that this brings.”

When the participants gathered on the level of the building for an evening reception with an astonishing panorama view over the heart of Berlin, it became evident that the day's proceedings had yielded many useful insights into strategies for enhancing the equity of scientific collaboration in an environment where disparities persist. And the first new networks for future research collaboration were already born.