By Samuel Ouma
The Southern Voice Research Conference 2023 Came to a Close on Wednesday, October 2023, in Nairobi, Kenya.
The two-day event brought together delegates from more than 50 countries, including Denis Foretia, the Co-Chair of the Denis Foretia Foundation and the Executive Chairman of the Nkafu Policy Institute.
The delegates discussed Southern Voice’s ongoing project on equitable partnerships in research for development.
They also focused on the nuances and power dynamics of north-south research collaborations.
Social cohesion, migration, civil society involvement, think tank collaboration and the ageing population in the Global South are some of the common issues covered.
During the conference, think tanks were urged to consider the link between the global governance discussions at the G20 and why it matters to people on the ground.
The event aimed to mobilise commitment in Global South and North participants to rebalance power asymmetries within the global development community.
Its goal was also to enrich the visions of change of participants and create more informed views on the nuances involved in guaranteeing genuinely sustainable development.
It further aimed at developing strategies to inform the network’s objectives in the upcoming years that can also serve the goals of individual members and key partners.
Also, to enhance linkages within the Southern Voice network and with key Northern and Southern partners by identifying common ambitions, challenges and complementary capacity for strategic cooperation in the following years.
Southern Voice is a network of 66 think tanks from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Its fundamental goal is to solve the current ‘information imbalance’ and ‘participation deficiency’ in the development discussion.
This is accomplished by scholars from the Global South creating, promoting, and distributing evidence-based policy analysis with an emphasis on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
