Paper short abstract:

ThIS paper aims at discussing the many decades of academic and scientific collaboration between scholars from ‘Global South’ and their fellows of ‘Global North’. It highlights the new challenges in various collaborative and cooperative research programs in the ‘Global south’.

Paper long abstract:

The rapid intrusion of digital technologies into research practices in recent years has revolutionized research methods, approaches, tools and techniques. Fieldworks and subjects of research have not either escaped these changes. How have the dynamics of cross-cultural and transnational research impacted the ‘North-South’ academic relations in recent years ? Drawing from my experiences of participating in collaborative research in a number of research institutions in Francophone Africa, South Africa and Europe, this paper will discuss the opportunities and challenges of deconstructing classic approaches and identify ways for re-imagining academic partnerships in ‘North-South’ relations in the digital age.

For decades, researchers and research institutions in the Global North have relied on their fellows in the Global South to carry out research activities within a cooperative and collaborative framework. These collaborations are often defined on the ‘Global North’ framework basis. The ‘Global South’ research fellows become consumers of the research design and implementers of the research activities on the ground. These activities consisted of organizing workshops, conferences and empirical data collection for the needs of their fellows from ‘North’. Despite the shortage, these institutions offer a minimum space for exchange between scholars from the ‘North’ and their fellows in the ‘South’. In this light, ‘North-South’ partnerships shifted from normative framework to individualized or personalized one. How does this individuality of collaborative research between the ‘Global South’ and the ‘Global North’ impact on the implementation of research in the South on the one hand and on research findings on the other hand?