Shaping The Guild's approach to equitable partnerships
Prof Jan Palmowski, Secretary-General, The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities explains how the Blantyre-Blantyre partnership has helped shape The Guild's approach to equitable partnerships.
The Blantyre-Blantyre project was a key inspiration for the new approach to equitable research partnerships we took in The Guild of European Research-intensive Universities. Prof Paul Garside’s presentation of how the Blantyre-Blantyre project evolved was a key moment for us, and critical learnings from that project – the need to listen to each other, to focus on local needs, to invest in the long term and – most importantly – to prioritise academic and societal need before then working with governments and funders in partnership: these all underpinned the work we are doing now in The Guild. These ideas were instrumental in our demands for the EU to change its research and innovation partnership strategy towards Africa. The EU accepted these core principles in the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, endorsed by national leaders at the EU-AU Summit of 2022.
But these ideas also influenced The Guild directly, in two ways. First, we developed a new strategy for equitable partnerships that informed many of our universities in the creation of a new Africa strategy. Second, the example of the Blantyre-Blantyre project helped inspire us to spearhead twenty Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence, clusters that are framed by an institutional commitment to sustainability, but whose topics and collaborations have been inspired by bottom-up research collaborations, with equity, mutuality and local need at the heart of these discussions. These Clusters bring together over 250 researchers from over 100 institutions from Africa and Europe. They are the first of their kind worldwide in scale and long-term ambition to address the common challenges that bind our continents together.
We still have a long way to go. But the example of the Blantyre-Blantyre Research Facility – and the personal commitment of the researchers from the University of Glasgow – have been a deep inspiration to me personally, and to our entire network. They helped change us, and how we want to foster research collaborations between the global north and the global south, for the benefit of science, and for the benefit of humanity.