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- Published on: 16 April 2021
- Published on: 16 April 2021'Decolonising’ the decolonising rhetoric
None of the authors of this decolonising roadmap listed an association with an academic institution in a low-and middle-income country (LMIC). They represented two London schools, two NGO organizations based in Geneva, and one from a former colony—Australia. No doubt these authors share a wealth of experience in low- and middle-income countries but the platforms they chose to speak from exemplify some of the best of high-income country Western (Northern?) educational and humanitarian outreach.
The critical inequities they cite include:
• Limiting participation of LMIC experts and community representatives
• Arbitrarily choosing interventions or research topics with little coordination or engagement
• Typically placing European or North American ‘experts’ in leadership positions with minimal experience working in the project setting,
• Basing staff, offices and other resources in high-income countries
• Funding application evaluation panels without or with limited representation from affected communities or stakeholders in which work will be done; grants awarded without due consideration for partnership ethics.A 15 April 2021 Nature Medicine letter reported, “Not one African institution was named in the press release” when a USD30 million grant for assisting African nations in “improved use of data for decision-making in malaria control and elimination” was announced. 1
Perhaps this BMJ GH editorial is a roadmap for s...
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None declared.