Four researchers from the southern part of the world make cross-border collaborations count
Science in the Least Developed Countries: How to Strengthen the Research Capacity in the Lowest-Dimensional Countries
The UN designates 46 nations as the world’s least-developed countries because of their poor and vulnerable populations. Lacking adequate food security, drinking water and electricity, they are more vulnerable to economic and environmental catastrophes. The economic growth in these countries was greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nature Index spoke to researchers based in four LDCs — Senegal, Haiti, Nepal and Cambodia — about what works and what doesn’t when global-north countries attempt to collaborate and bolster research capacity in their nations.
There is not a lot of government money available to train students in science. The Senegalese government only gives researchers half of the money before the rest is delivered, making it difficult to do science. I have never applied for a grant from the government. The grants that we get from global North countries are not enough to buy big equipment. For example, a scanning electron microscope can cost US$1 million.
PhD students were trained in material-sciences research in my laboratory. I have 11 PhD students and 10 master’s students, and I have graduated 7 PhDs. Though we have access to state-of-the-art equipment, some people prefer to focus on speculative research for their PhDs.
The use of science diplomacy with other countries is something that we rely on. To get access to equipment and training, I designed a concept to create a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between our university and those abroad. For example, in data science, I have a MOU with the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal, Canada, to access facilities such as high-resolution electron-microscopy equipment and X-ray diffraction technology. Our joint proposal received funding from Canada’s International Development Research Centre. For three to six months, our students are asked to go there for research. So far, four of my students have gone to Montreal; the first graduated in November. When one of the universities is English and the other French it can be difficult to establish a Memorandum of Understanding. Two MOU documents are drawn up in each language.
In order to help the student find funding and a lab, another strategy is to help them. There isn’t an MOU between the two institutions but the student is fully funded. For example, working with a collaborator at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I developed a research project to work on 2D materials needed for storage devices or renewable energy, and then I selected students in Senegal to apply for Faculty for the Future fellowships from the Schlumberger Foundation in Houston, Texas. I’ve had one postdoc and a PhD student get these fellowships to do the work at Drexel. Collaborative training strategies are not common in Senegal and are only used by researchers that have built an international network.
There are high level scientific meetings in African nations that would help students. Scientists in developing countries don’t have grants to travel. Organizing this type of meeting in these areas will help scientists network and develop collaborations.
Source: Four global-south researchers making cross-border collaborations count
Water Chemistry in the Lower Mekong River Basin: a case study for Cambodia, Vietnam, and the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies
In 2020 I started my PhD to study water quality in the large and most productive lake in southeast Asia. Tonlé Sap is very important here in Cambodia, as well as Thailand and Vietnam, because so much food production occurs in and around it. My research suggests that fish may be declining owing to decreased water quality — notably low oxygen — around the lake, which is linked to the increased use of chemical fertilizers for rice production in the area. The extra water use upstream depletes the lake of water so the oxygen levels in the water get low, harming fish.
In 2020, I got an opportunity to study water chemistry from the Wonders of the Mekong, a programme developed by the University of Nevada Global Water Center in Reno, and government agencies in the United States and Cambodia, to boost research into the Lower Mekong river basin. I learnt about the many different ways that people live around Tonlé Sap and how it’s interconnected with their lives. Cambodia is a difficult place to complete a PhD because there are limited government funds and graduate-student funding from other countries.
Our government needs scientific research results. Other countries are free to do what they want with the Mekong River because we don’t have evidence of the downstream impacts. The water in the lake is reduced due to dams built very far away from Cambodia. The Mekong makes up 50% of the inputs to the Tonlé Sap Lake so it contributes the most to the concentration of nutrients.
I hope that the NexGen program will give me some knowledge on how to sustain research projects over time. When funding for equipment is available, there aren’t many people who are trained to use it after the project ends. We need funding to maintain a flow of students, and their knowledge of equipment and laboratory techniques, to sustain research efforts. The best part of NexGen is that they help researchers in each of the four countries along themekong and help create new collaborations to better the environment for everyone.
I work at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies, which provides research-based policy recommendations on social environmental issues to local, provincial and federal governments, notably natural-resource and disaster-risk-management agencies, in Nepal. We only have a small staff of around 20. Our part-time colleagues are usually at universities in Australia, Sweden, and the United States.
In Nepal, it can be tough to collaborate with international partners, given how strict our government is about sending money out of the country. If we lead a project and the grant funding comes to our account, it can be hard to transfer it to fund someone else. There is very limited funding from the government annually for research. As a result, there are very limited opportunities — particularly for students and researchers who are trying to do social science. Academic opportunities, such as PhD training, would not have been possible for many of us without international scholarships.
A consistent challenge we face is that grant calls are driven by a global agenda, which does not always match local contexts in the developing world. Forest coverage is essential but there are real life challenges with it, such as food–water security and human–wildlife conflicts. These needs can be deemed ‘too local’ or of limited scope to funders or northern colleagues. Language limitations are a common problem in the global south. As a result, sometimes the northern researcher will do the final writing of proposals and editing of publications. One of the challenges is that we as a policy institute want to emphasize the empirical findings, but the northern partner can also have different priorities. We have also experienced cases in which contributions of the global south are considered secondary compared with the theoretical arguments led by the northern partners.
A big challenge for clinical researchers in Haiti is the lack of quality medical data. Only one national journal is where scientists are allowed to publish. There is not enough expertise among the professors to train students, especially in medical specialities. We do not have any cardiac surgeons. One of the biggest challenges is that most of the funding that comes to Haiti for medical research is for infections such as cholera and HIV. But there are so many other problematic conditions that need to be addressed, including diabetes and hypertension and neurological disorders. I want global-north colleagues to realize that there’s more to public health in Haiti than just a couple of infectious diseases. We need medical training in, for example, neuroscience. For a patient to get a scanned, it costs between$200 and300, and we only have eight machines.
I paid for my own journey to the United States in May to get experience in neurology, with the help of my family. I reached out to a colleague at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, who helped me to connect with faculty members working on stroke research. I passed the first of three exams to receive a US medical licence in August and in October, I travelled to Kentucky to volunteer at the University of Louisville’s neurology department, which has a research programme on spinal cord injury. If I finish the exams, I’ll go to Miami to get some experience at another hospital and apply for a residency at a top training hospital in the United States. After I finish a residency, in about five years, I want to take my expertise back to Haiti.
International collaboration is a necessary part of science. How beneficial partnerships can be often determined by their nature and balance. A collaboration between the global north and south is more true than any other.
There are some things that can happen. World Bank income groups were used to split the countries because there is no definitive boundaries for the global north and global south. This inevitably leads to some arguable categorizations: South Africa is an upper middle-income country so is a ‘global north’ country in the data, for instance. The same is true for much of Latin America. Data from health-sciences journals was not available for analysis, since the supplement features separate data from the digital science dimensions database to broaden subject scope.
