Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an EU-funded human microbiome project in Tunisia, I will analyse how geo-political disparities and Western hegemonic scientific frameworks hinder the development of an equal, ethical science and reproduce stereotypical conceptions, which hark back to a past of colonial subjugation.

Paper long abstract:

Microbiome research, together with metagenomic analysis, has significantly expanded our ability to study microbes and to explore their role in human health and diseases. As a scientific effort born in the Global North, the discipline regards the African continent as a mere sampling reservoir, involving local scientists and research centres only at a subordinate level (Allali et al. 2021). The asymmetrical collaborations between Western and African scientists raise several ethical issues concerning the extractivist nature of microbiome science, consent and information regarding biodata (Bader et al. 2023; Huttenhower, Finn, and McHardy 2023), and representational diversity within the discipline and in the academia (Mangola et al. 2022). I will focus on an EU-funded microbiome science project in Tunisia, specifically aimed at building capacities through the collaboration with European leading institutions. Collaborations are however often fictive: EU policy discourse often purports co-creation as a tool to achieve economic benefits rather than social justice (Ruess, Müller, and Pfotenhauer 2023). When it comes to Africa, moreover, an asymmetry in fundings and leading institutions shows how knowledge production continues to exist within a borrowed, hegemonic, post-colonial framework (Adebanwi 2016: 350). Thanks to an in-depth, prolonged ethnographic stay among Tunisian scientists, I will analyse how geo-political, economic, and epistemological disparities hinder the development of an equal science across a Global North and Global South axis.