Fixers and Friends: Local and International Researchers

Abstract

Is it possible to ‘make inequality work for mutual benefit’? This chapter argue that it is and through reviews of personal experiences of working with colleagues in several Sahel countries it offers a tentative guide to a non-normative pragmatic approach to global injustices where we do something with what we can do something about. This is a step-by-step approach where the guiding principle is a commitment to establish collaborative relationships across structural inequalities that lasts over time based on mutual interests and gains accepting that these are not necessarily equally divided, but still facilitates research partners in the global South access to funding and to the agents of the international interventions that operates in their countries.

This chapter is written in memory of my colleague Ambroise Doukou, a genuine intellectual and exemplar researcher that died way too young in a car accident in Central Mali.