There can be no band-aid solutions to reversing the insidious and perverse nature of coloniality. For those of us in the Global South, decolonization is a reassertion of self-determination and agency. It is redistribution of wealth and capital, access, and space.
The fifth annual Global Health 50/50 report highlighted that 75% of the 2,000 governing board seats are held by high-income countries (HICs), of which 51% are from two countries (USA and UK), while a mere 2.5% are held by people from low-income countries (LICs). Given this evidence, it is imperative to mentor early-career and mid-career global health professionals from low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) as leaders to improve diversity of boards at the global level.
Many advocates of localization would prefer to ignore the issue of racism, hoping that it will go away or that localization can somehow reform the system without tackling the neo-colonial mindsets on which the current system is built.
When we think capital or resources (I will use those terms inter-changeably) we often tend to automatically think money, finances, cash, funds. Yes, of course it is one kind of resource. But is it the only kind that makes things happen
If we want to shift from the “system we have”, to “the system we want”, what needs to change? What will the new system look like? What will it take to move from where we are to where we want to be?
The six-month Fellowship is an experimental approach aimed at strengthening the collective “weave” between change-makers around the world and, by doing so, at deepening and expanding the #ShiftThePower movement.
In Zambia, [which, as a middle-income country, is starting to see international donor funding drop off], discussions around civil society sustainability have recently gained new momentum thanks to the efforts for the Zambian Governance Foundation (ZGF).
The public in donor countries should be entrusted with more than this half story – their tax paying vested interests combined with a current propensity to engage in social change efforts should instead be leveraged.
It was three years ago – in what feels like a very different world – that a small group of community development activists and practitioners from Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the UK met up in London.
Are you interested in supporting broader efforts to shift power and build the (civil) society we want by helping to connect the dots between innovative and emergent practices around the world?
