Bridging the Global South-North divide in research funding and practices is one of the most urgent challenges facing the global research community today. Despite growing collaboration across borders, deep disparities remain in who gets funded, who sets research agendas, and whose knowledge counts.
While researchers in the Global South work closely with communities and offer grounded, context-rich insights, they are frequently sidelined in favor of institutions in the Global North that dominate funding decisions, set research agendas, and occupy prestigious publication spaces. To build truly inclusive and impactful research ecosystems, we must confront these imbalances head-on.
Follow the Money – The Funding Fault Line
The Global North controls the lion’s share of international research funding. Major foundations, development banks, and academic institutions in Europe and North America often serve as gatekeepers to the grants that fuel global research efforts. This control is frequently accompanied by rigid criteria, short project timelines, and minimal room for Southern leadership or local input.
What’s at Stake?
- Dependency vs. autonomy: Southern institutions often serve as implementation partners rather than intellectual leaders.
- Agenda distortion: Funding priorities may reflect donor interests more than local needs.
- Limited sustainability: Without investment in local capacity, outcomes remain short-lived.
The Way Forward
To bridge the Global South-North divide in research funding and practices, donors must:
- Create mechanisms that fund Southern-led research consortia directly.
- Design equitable grant governance models where all partners co-own decisions.
- Embrace long-term investments that allow meaningful knowledge development and institutional growth.
Whose Knowledge Counts? Reclaiming the Research Agenda
The research process begins with questions but who gets to ask them? Too often, it’s academics from the Global North who design projects and methodologies, leaving researchers in the South to execute predefined studies.
This imbalance undercuts the authenticity of findings and reinforces a colonial dynamic where local realities are filtered through foreign lenses. For meaningful transformation, we must shift the research paradigm toward shared authority and contextual leadership.
Steps to Reclaim Local Voices:
- Promote co-design of research frameworks with equal input from all partners.
- Encourage authorship parity in publications, particularly for field-led researchers.
- Support regionally driven knowledge priorities that reflect local urgencies be they climate adaptation, informal economies, or indigenous systems.
From Extractive to Collaborative—Reshaping Research Relationships
Extractive research models where data is collected in the South and analyzed or published in the North have long undermined trust and agency. These practices ignore the intellectual contributions of Southern researchers and the lived experiences of the communities studied.
Reimagining partnerships means valuing mutual accountability, shared credit, and two-way knowledge exchange. This is not charity it’s justice.
Pathways to Better Partnerships:
- Establish embedded fellowships and mentorship exchanges between North and South.
- Build joint publication pipelines that ensure visibility for researchers across the partnership.
- Adopt inclusive metrics of success, such as local policy influence or capacity transfer
The Time to Rebalance Is Now
The world is too interconnected and the challenges too complex to continue relying on silo-ed, top-down research models. To create knowledge that matters, that’s actionable, and that’s just, we must commit to bridging the Global South-North divide in research funding and practices. This isn’t just about inclusion. It’s about effectiveness, integrity, and sustainability.
In short, equitable research systems are not only possible they are necessary for solving the world’s biggest problems.
Let’s Rethink the Future of Research Together
Bridging the Global South-North divide in research funding and practices isn’t just an ethical imperative it’s a strategic one. Equitable research delivers better data, deeper insights, and more lasting impact. But change doesn’t happen passively.
At Insight and Social, we work with funders, institutions, and local experts to co-create research that’s fair, inclusive, and grounded in the realities of the Global South.
If you believe in research that reflects all voices not just the loudest partner with us. Let’s build systems where knowledge flows in all directions, and funding follows impact not hierarchy.
