In this blog post, Joshua Sarpong, higher education researcher, and Bezawit Alamirew Wube, STEM education specialist based at the University of Auckland, explore how countries in the Global South can move beyond aid dependency to build their own scientific and technological futures.
Bezawit and I, Joshua, are researchers who have spent nearly a decade studying how knowledge systems shape development in Africa and beyond. Our recent article in the International Journal of Educational Development explored the political economy of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and scientific sovereignty in the Global South. Our findings are both promising and troubling: STEM has significant potential to drive self-reliant development, but how it is currently financed and governed often undermines sovereignty and long-term national priorities.
I, Joshua, saw the human side of this challenge growing up in a farming community in Ghana. As a child, food production seemed endless – fertile soils and predictable rains made farming reliable. However, everything has changed in just a few decades: soils have degraded, harvests have shrunk and once-stable livelihoods have become precarious. These shifts are part of a wider crisis. Climate change is accelerating and the Global South bears the brunt – from rising sea levels to drought and food insecurity. This blog draws on our findings and explains why the politics of aid, donor conditionalities and national investment decisions matter now more than ever.
A fragile future if others control financial resources
Our research revealed a stark gap: sub-Saharan Africa invests just 0.51% of GDP on research and development, far below the global average of 1.79%. This gap often results in ill-equipped laboratories, weak digital networks and low student enrolment in science-related disciplines. Only 1 in 4 of African university students pursue STEM programmes, which leaves governments dependent on foreign expertise for everything from vaccine production to sustainable energy systems.
Underinvestment is not just an educational issue but a sovereignty issue. A country that cannot generate its own scientific knowledge will rely on others for solutions to problems such as climate change, food insecurity, health issues and digital innovation. In geopolitical terms, dependence on external funding for science and technology is as risky as dependence on foreign oil or imported weapons, because it leaves countries vulnerable to issues like external pressure, unexpected policy shifts and the strategic interests of others rather than their own internal needs.
The recent withdrawal of USAID programmes from several African nations and shifting donor priorities in an era of global instability show that aid streams are never guaranteed. For governments in the Global South to wait for donors to build their scientific future may be comparable to building a house on sand: the moment there is high pressure, the foundation deteriorates, and everything built upon it collapses.
Colonial legacies and the politics of aid
Part of the reasons why the Global South lag behind in socio-economic development lies in history. Colonial administrations designed education systems to produce mainly clerks and civil servants to serve the colonial masters, not inventors and engineers to help the colonised countries achieve self-sufficiency. The legacy remains, as today, many African universities still prioritise disciplines like the humanities, law and business over the science disciplines. While the humanities and social sciences remain vital for ensuring that technological progress is ethical and contextually grounded, their dominance has left the region underprepared for scientific self-reliance.
Aid dependence complicates the issue further, as donor-funded programmes often come with strings attached. Teaching and research priorities, as well as funding mechanisms, are frequently aligned more with donor countries’ geopolitical or commercial interests than with local needs. This is how African researchers usually end up working on projects that essentially benefit, for instance, pharmaceutical companies in Europe or agriculture ministries in North America, rather than solving urgent local challenges like food insecurity and public health crises.
That said, donor support can work when it respects national ownership. A good example is the African Centres of Excellence (ACE) initiative, supported by the World Bank and coordinated by the Association of African Universities. Since 2014, the ACE programme has helped establish more than 80 centres across the sub-Saharan Africa, each focused on solving regional challenges – from water and sanitation in Ghana to infectious disease genomics in Nigeria and sustainable agriculture in Côte d’Ivoire. These centres have trained thousands of postgraduate students, built regional research networks and forged partnerships with industry – all within African-led governance frameworks that ensure relevance and sustainability.
There are also other inspiring examples of African-led collaboration shaping the continent’s research future. The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) brings together top universities to drive cutting-edge research on issues like climate change and inequality, while the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) strengthens national research funding systems and promotes evidence-based policymaking. These initiatives show that when funding and leadership align, donor support can empower Africa’s knowledge systems rather than direct them from afar.
Some lessons from Rwanda and Ethiopia
Despite its limited resources, the Rwandan government has consistently prioritised STEM since the early 2000s, integrating it into national strategies such as Vision 2020, Vision 2050, and the National Strategy for Transformation (NSTI, 2017-2024). This long-term commitment has yielded tangible results. Over the past decade, Rwanda has expanded nationwide broadband access through initiatives like the National Broadband Policy (2013) and the Smart Rwanda Master Plan (2015), which laid the foundation for its digital economy. It has also established coding and innovation academies, including the Rwanda Coding Academy (founded in 2019), the Digital Transformation Centre, and Andela Rwanda, which train young people in software engineering and digital entrepreneurship. Through these coordinated efforts, STEM has become a cornerstone of Rwanda’s economic transformation and a model of how coherent national policy can align donor engagement with domestic priorities.
The plans involve directing financial, institutional, policy, and human capital investments toward strengthening technical universities, engineering programs, and domestic research capacity, with the goal of reducing dependence on foreign expertise. A notable symbol of this self-reliant approach is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), financed mainly through domestic resources and public contributions rather than IMF loans, World Bank assistance or heavy dependence on other external funding . More than 90% of the project’s funding came from the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, while citizens at home and abroad raised billions of birr (the Ethiopian currency) through bond purchases, salary contributions and public donations. Completed in 2025, GERD is Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, capable of generating over 5,000 megawatts of power – a milestone for energy security, rural electrification and reduced dependence on imports. GERD also highlights the complex trade-offs of large-scale infrastructure, including environmental and diplomatic tensions with downstream countries such as Sudan and Egypt. Smaller initiatives, like the Beles Hydroelectric Power Plant, further demonstrate Ethiopia’s commitment to building a home-grown technical capacity while balancing national ambition with regional and ecological responsibility. While Ethiopia continues to face challenges (such as regional instability and governance constraints), its experience shows how strong political will and coherent policy frameworks can attract external support and ensure that it serves nationally defined priorities. Aid in itself is not the problem; it is aid without sovereignty.
Why this topic matters now
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the costs of dependency in clear terms. African countries were at the back of the line for vaccines, lacking manufacturing capabilities and limited bargaining power. More recently, shifting global priorities, from wars in Europe to domestic budget cuts in donor countries, have further squeezed development assistance.
The accelerating impacts of climate change have exposed the vulnerability of many economies in the Global South to external shocks. From food insecurity to energy dependence, these challenges demand more than short-term fixes – they require deep, homegrown scientific capacity. Yet without strong investment in STEM education and research, governments remain reliant on external agendas, whether those of donors, multinational corporations or foreign governments. This is why investment in STEM is no longer just about jobs and growth. It is about sovereignty, resilience and geopolitical leverage.
This lesson feels especially urgent now: even in the United States, science agencies like the National Science Foundation, NASA and the National Institutes of Health are facing significant funding cuts. Such developments show how quickly global priorities can shift, and why the Global South must strengthen its own capacity to fund and sustain STEM innovation from within.
Be cautious of the STEM-only trap
As we push for greater STEM investment, we should sound a note of caution. Some countries in the Global North are now swinging too far in the other direction by cutting humanities and social science programmes in favour of purely technical disciplines. This risks producing brilliant engineers without the ethical, cultural and political grounding to ensure their innovations serve society rather than disrupt it.
The Global South should avoid replicating this imbalance, since true success relies on interdisciplinary collaboration. Our own partnership reflects this principle: Bezawit’s academic background is in Engineering, while Joshua’s is in the Social Sciences – two worlds that do not often meet but should. Working together has shown us how much stronger ideas become when STEM and non-STEM perspectives are combined to tackle shared challenges. Building sustainable, inclusive futures requires engineers who understand ethics, policymakers who understand data and communities who feel represented in national development strategies.
Choosing between dependency and sovereignty
The Global South is at a crossroads. One path leads to continued dependency, where science agendas are written in Washington, Brussels or Beijing, and local researchers strive for relevance. The other path leads to sovereignty: governments investing in their own knowledge futures, rooted in local priorities, enriched by harmonious cooperation and accountable to their citizens.
In today’s world, sovereignty is no longer just about borders or armies – it is about the capacity to generate new knowledge, drive innovation and adapt to crises. For Africa, Asia and Latin America, the message is clear: building STEM from within is not optional; it is the foundation of true independence.
About the Authors
Dr Joshua Sarpong is an Admissions Officer and higher education researcher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His work explores policy, funding, governance, university autonomy, and university–industry collaboration, with a focus on how these forces shape decision-making and impact equity and access.
Bezawit Alamirew Wube is a professional staff member at the University of Auckland with an academic background in Computer and Electrical Engineering as well as Marketing Management. Her research interests focus on STEM education, particularly how education systems can be strengthened to foster innovation, inclusion and sustainable development in the Global South.
Read their full article Empowering STEM education from within: A call for self-reliance in the Global South, International Journal of Educational Development, Volume 117, September 2025
