No. 116/2024

in need of civilising,” says Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Given the complexity of the challenges facing humanity, he calls upon people to “dare to fundamentally question everything we have believed so far and to embark on a process of unlearning certainties.” EXCELLENT SOUTH To this end, it would be necessary to turn away from the knowledge hubs in high- income countries, says Sheila Jasanoff. “Young, internationally mobile researchers from the Global South have nearly all studied in North America and Europe,” she says. Young researchers from the Global North taking degrees in the Global South, on the other hand, was a rare occurrence, although it would be theoretically possible to provide excellent education in the countries of the Global South – at a fraction of the cost of Ivy League universities. Jasanoff refers to “frugal science,” an Indian concept whereby capital and material usage are kept as modest as possible. “What makes science frugal whilst it can still be called science is actually a scientific question that should be explored,” she says. Daya Reddy observes similar developments in Africa. The emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town and former President of the International Science Council is the chair of the Humboldt Foundation’s International Advisory Board. “Regional hubs have been developing for a long time,” says Reddy and cites the Alliance of Research Universities in Africa (ARUA) as an example: an African network of currently 23 particularly research-intensive universities. “At my university, too, 15 percent of the students come from other African countries because the quality of the education we offer is so high,” he says. In order to establish and reinforce such regional science hubs, research collaborations with researchers in the Global North are essential, he says. “This is the only way universities in the Global South can become attractive destinations for studying.” RESIDENCY PROGRAMM “Power and Knowledge – confronting global imbalances in our knowledge systems”: the 2024 Humboldt Residency Programme involving eleven international participants from academia, the media and civil society also addresses the challenges of and new paths for global knowledge transfer. www.humboldt- foundation.de/en/ residency-programme Above all, Reddy believes international academic institutions have a duty to promote an equitable global research landscape. “The criteria for awarding research funding must be designed in a way that would create fair North-South academic partnerships and not helicopter science where data are collected by researchers in the Global South who are, however, not equal partners,” he says. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni initially wants to address the topic of an even playing field theoretically before starting to develop solutions. “First of all, we have to know exactly what problems we are dealing with,” he says. “Good intentions alone will not break down established power structures.” The key question is, “How can we ensure that all the knowledge that reflects the diversity and plurality of humanity really gets a hearing?” Currently, there are many approaches and ideas that should be combined. “None of us has a ready answer to how a fair science system should be designed,” he says. “But in the process of unlearning certainties, upon which we must all embark, a path will emerge.” Today AI is seen as an indicator of innovative strength. Stanford University’s AI Index Report gives a worldwide overview of developments in artificial intelligence (AI). The 2024 report examines technical progress, public perception of AI and geopolitical developments, for example in which countries and sectors the most AI models have been developed. This reveals a broader global distribution of countries – and industry lies well ahead of research in academia – which may partly have to do with the costs involved, particularly in training these models, as the study shows. knowledge with ‘primitive’,” she explains. “We have to accept that knowledge is more comprehensive than what is generated by researchers in their labs or in mathematical models – and that it doesn’t necessarily hail from universities.” ROBBED OF THEIR HUMANITY Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with a focus on Africa at the University of Bayreuth and Humboldt Foundation academic host, also argues thus. “At the beginning of the modern era, people were racialised and anyone who wasn’t white was robbed of their humanity according to the gradations of their skin colour,” he says. “People who are thought of as belonging to a subcategory of human beings are neither permitted a history, nor knowledge, culture, or language.” Applied to the problem of climate change, for instance, this means that “anyone who does not believe in technological progress but sees themselves as part of living nature in which trees, rivers andmountains are also living creatures, is considered barbaric and 25 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 116/2024