Supreme Court’s Justice Dominic Adjei slams unequal research partnership between Canada and Africa
By : Doreen Ampofo A Judge of the Supreme Court of Ghana and the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, Justice Sir Dennis Dominic Adjei, has critiqued Canada’s unequal research partnerships with Africa, describing it as extraction dressed as collaboration. According to him, the research ties remain structurally unequal, leaving African institutions and […]
Ghanaian Supreme Court Justice Sir Dennis Dominic Adjei has criticized Canada's research partnerships with Africa as structurally unequal and extractive. Speaking at a conference in Atlantic Canada, Adjei described the relationships as "extraction dressed as collaboration," with African institutions and researchers left as dependent sub-grantees rather than true partners.
Decades of Canadian funding and goodwill have not created reciprocal relationships, he argued. Adjei pointed to five areas of inequality in the partnerships, including a flawed funding architecture that gives intellectual property rights to donors, authorship patterns that suppress the emergence of African research leaders, and the frequent relocation of data generated in Africa to servers outside the continent.
He also criticized the lack of concrete mechanisms for equal partnership in both strategies. Adjei recommended using existing contract laws to address these inequalities, implementing equitable partnership agreements, and reforming internal research assessment to ensure credit reflects contribution rather than geography.
Written by urgent.news from GBC Ghana's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
