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Endorsement declaration

Thank you for your interest in the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations

Co-created by Africa’s key higher education and science constituencies, the Charter’s core concern is to advance a fundamental rebalancing of the global research and science ecosystem. The aim is to ensure that African scholars, institutions and knowledges take their rightful place in the worldwide scientific effort –  across the formal, natural and social sciences, arts and humanities.

The Charter insists that such a rebalancing is an imperative: as a matter of disrupting the perpetuation of unjust hierarchies arising from colonial histories, and of fostering the richer, pluriversal scholarship needed to properly sustain human dignity and tackle the crises facing the global community collectively.

The Charter asserts that international research collaborations – because they dominate Africa’s scientific effort – offer a critical leverage point for advancing a wider rebalancing of the global research ecosystem. Collaborations have the potential to be transformative.

The Charter asserts that, in order to be transformative, research collaborations must redress each of the power imbalances that presently constitute an uneven playing field in scientific knowledge production and constrain global scholarship.

The Charter articulates 12 principles for how research collaborations need to be configured to redress the multi-layered power imbalances – at the levels of epistemologies, language, theories and concepts, the development frame, institutional resourcing and concrete partnership arrangements.

The Charter further sets out 6 key aspirations for change in policy and regulatory frameworks – among higher education institutions and networks, funders, research assessment bodies, governments, international science bodies and publishers – to ensure that such a transformative collaboration mode is established as best and standard practice.

During its launch, representatives of key higher education and science bodies in and outside of Africa formally declared their endorsement of the Charter principles and aspirations, and their resolve to support the wider initiative and programme of work around realising them.

To register with the wider initiative to advance the implementation of the Charter, please click below.