24/08/2026
What makes a global research partnership genuinely equitable?
In a new Fellow’s Contribution published by the International CORE Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Professor Francis B. Nyamnjoh reflects on a persistent imbalance in international research: the “paymaster mentality”—the assumption that those who provide the funding should also determine the questions, methods, and terms of recognition.
His contribution asks difficult but necessary questions. Who gets to shape the research agenda? Whose knowledge is valued? And whose work remains unseen?
Drawing on his influential work on incompleteness and convivial scholarship, Professor Nyamnjoh argues that meaningful collaboration requires more than the language of inclusion. It calls for shared ownership of research agendas, fair recognition of local knowledge and often-invisible labor, serious engagement with indigenous languages and contexts, and funding arrangements that enable partnership rather than control it.
At the heart of the contribution is a simple but far-reaching idea: no scholar, institution, or intellectual tradition is complete in itself. Knowledge becomes richer when we approach one another not as benefactors and beneficiaries, but as genuine intellectual partners.
Professor Nyamnjoh is a Fellow of the CORE Academy and Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. The contribution is adapted from his keynote address at the 2026 MIASA Conference on Sustainable Governance in Africa.
Read the full contribution:
https://coreacad.org/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=273
