Abstract

For more than three decades, global imbalances that exist between countries of the North and South have been an intense debate and remain on the global agenda for the realization of sustainable development goals. North-South collaboration is widely perceived as a driver to solving complex socio-economic and political issues. In the past, collaborations were mainly in the form of technical and financial assistance to countries of the South to transform their economies and improve lives. However, these approaches were considered inadequate. New techniques such as capacity building/strengthening, overseas training, exchange programmes and collaborative projects across fields including medical research were introduced. Collaborations were mainly country-specific and implemented through projects and not all have achieved their objectives.

The changes in the research ecosystem in the last 10 years have shown the significance of collaboration in sustainable development. The call for regional integration and the emergence of globalisation together with frequent movement of people and goods across borders, demanded a health research system with a regional dimension to address specified challenges.

The West Africa Network for Tuberculosis, Aids & Malaria (WANETAM) was established to meet this call. WANETAM is one of EDCTP’s networks of excellence focused on addressing the disease burdens of Aids, TB and Malaria, building clinical trials capacity in the sub-region through North-South and South-South collaborations. Its regional focus has made it a perfect network that provides high-quality data that informs policies and programmes in the region and beyond. The strength of the collaboration is focused on sharing resources to build clinical capacity and at the same time leveraging the existing strengths and specialty of member institutions to strengthen the capacity of weaker partners.
Through this principle of collaboration, the network has managed to design and successfully implement capacity-building programmes such as fellowships, short-term trainings and exchange programmes, strengthened clinical research capacity and governance structures, data management systems, quality assurance and accreditation for laboratories. These systems have empowered researchers to share ideas, lessons-learnt and resources in building strong early warning and surveillance systems that can adequately respond to outbreaks in the region, informed decisions and impact policies.