Respected Lord of Ghana’s Supreme Court, Justice Dennis Dominic Adjei has called for a radical restructuring of Canada-Africa research partnerships, pushing for binding agreements that give African universities direct control over research funds, data, intellectual property and academic recognition.
Addressing the 3rd Conference on Economic Growth in Atlantic Canada at the Hilton Garden Inn in Moncton, Justice Adjei argued that the answer to decades of imbalance in North-South research collaboration is not simply more funding.
“It does not need more money. It needs better instruments,” he declared.
The Justice of Ghana’s Supreme Court and Judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights said African institutions must cease being treated primarily as beneficiaries or sub-grantees and instead become contractual partners with clearly defined rights, obligations and remedies.
His central proposal is the adoption of standard, equitable and legally enforceable research partnership agreements between Canadian and African institutions.
“A beneficiary has no standing. A partner does have good standing,” Justice Adjei said.
According to him, the distinction is critical because a contractual partnership gives both sides enforceable rights, access to a forum for resolving disputes and remedies when obligations are breached.
A contract for every partnership
Justice Adjei proposed that research agreements should specify, from the beginning, who controls the budget, where data will be held, who owns intellectual property and how academic credit will be distributed.
Among the provisions he recommended are, agoverning law for the partnership; direct budget authority for African institutions; authorship arrangements agreed before data collection; African custody and repatriation of research data.
The revered Justice of the Supreme Court also recommended clear intellectual-property allocations; publication rights, and measurable capacity-building obligations that survive the end of the grant.
“Every asymmetry identified is capable of being cured by a clause,” he said.
He rejected the suggestion that such agreements would require complicated or novel legal mechanisms.
“None of this is exotic drafting,” Justice Adjei said, arguing that the failure is not a lack of legal expertise but a failure to treat research partnerships as relationships deserving serious legal attention.
Give African universities the money directly
Justice Adjei identified direct funding as the reform most capable of changing the balance of power.
He called on international funders to allow African universities to qualify as prime recipients of research grants, rather than routinely forcing them to operate as sub-grantees under institutions in donor countries.
“Of everything we have said this morning, this one reform would change the most,” he said.
He further called for African institutions to receive indirect and overhead costs at the same rates applied to institutions in donor countries.
For Justice Adjei, direct funding would do more than transfer money. It would transfer institutional authority and allow African universities to develop the administrative and research infrastructure needed to determine their own priorities.
He pointed to the Science Granting Councils Initiative in sub-Saharan Africa, supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, as a model worth expanding.
The initiative, he said, “funds the machinery by which Africans decide what African research should be about.”
Make authorship enforceable
The Justice also wants universities to stop treating authorship as an informal matter to be resolved after research is completed.
He proposed mandatory authorship protocols that must be agreed upon before data collection begins.
The recommendation is designed to ensure that African researchers who lead fieldwork, generate data and make significant intellectual contributions receive appropriate academic recognition.
“Authorship is the currency in which academic careers are paid,” he said.
Justice Adjei argued that denying a researcher appropriate authorship can have consequences extending well beyond a single publication, particularly for young academics whose future promotions, grants and research leadership opportunities depend on their publication record.
His solution is therefore to make authorship a contractual issue from the outset.
Keep African research data within African legal control
Justice Adjei also called for stronger contractual safeguards over data generated from African populations.
He wants partnership agreements to identify who has custody of research data, where it will be stored, under which laws it will be governed, how it may subsequently be used and when it must be returned to the African institution.
He specifically proposed a data-repatriation obligation as part of research agreements.
The Justice pointed to the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, commonly known as the Malabo Convention, arguing that African legal frameworks must be recognised in international research agreements.
“The question facing a Canadian institution is not whether African data law exists. It exists,” he said. “The question is whether your partnership agreements acknowledge it.”
Protect African intellectual property
Justice Adjei further called for explicit provisions governing intellectual property and genetic resources.
He cited Ghana’s participation in the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and urged governments to resolve legal uncertainties that could undermine equitable research cooperation.
“Ambiguity in a partner’s legal status is itself a barrier to partnership,” he said.
He also urged African governments to accelerate ratification of the AfCFTA intellectual-property protocol and domesticate the Malabo Convention.
“A harmonised legal position is the single most valuable thing African governments can bring to this table, and it costs no money at all,” he said.
Turn capacity building into a contractual obligation
Justice Adjei also wants the phrase “capacity building” to acquire measurable meaning.
He proposed that every research partnership should state precisely what will remain in the African institution after a project ends.
That could include trained researchers, functioning laboratories, locally controlled data repositories and publication records that allow young African scholars to build sustainable careers.
Universities, he said, should then audit partnerships at close-out to determine whether those commitments were actually fulfilled.
His warning was blunt:
“Capacity building that builds no capacity is extraction with better manners.”
Make equitable agreements the default
Justice Adjei called on universities to adopt a standard-form equitable partnership agreement as institutional policy.
Under his proposal, departing from the standard agreement would require justification rather than leaving African institutions to negotiate equality from scratch each time they enter a new partnership.
He also urged universities to create institution-to-institution consortia, with rotating secretariats, rather than relying primarily on relationships between individual principal investigators.
The approach, he argued, would make partnerships more durable and reduce their dependence on individual researchers.
Governments have a role
Justice Adjei assigned responsibilities to both Canadian and African governments.
He called on Canada to complement its Africa Strategy with a dedicated research and innovation pillar backed by its own instrument and reporting mechanism.
African governments, meanwhile, should accelerate the implementation of continental frameworks on intellectual property and data protection.
The objective, he said, should be to create a predictable legal environment in which African institutions can negotiate with foreign universities from a position of equality.
Atlantic Canada can benefit from equal partnerships
Justice Adjei also argued that equitable research partnerships should not be viewed simply as a development concession to Africa.
Atlantic Canada, he said, could benefit economically and academically from stronger relationships with African institutions, particularly as the region seeks demographic renewal, greater research intensity and ways of retaining skilled graduates.
The region’s relatively modest size, he suggested, could actually make it an ideal environment for reciprocal partnerships.
“A mid-sized university in New Brunswick and a mid-sized university in Ghana can build a relationship in which neither party is overwhelmed by the other,” he said.
He described equality as a competitive advantage.
“Partners treated as principals bring their best questions and their best people, and they come back,” Justice Adjei said. “Partners treated as subcontractors bring compliance, and they leave when someone offers better terms.”
From goodwill to enforceable rights
Justice Adjei’s proposal ultimately comes down to replacing declarations of goodwill with enforceable rights.
He acknowledged the existence of ethical frameworks such as the TRUST Code and the Cape Town Statement on fairness in research, but argued that principles alone cannot adequately protect African institutions.
“A norm becomes law when three things attach to it: a party with standing to invoke it, a forum in which to do so, and a consequence that follows from breach,” he said.
His solution is therefore not another declaration.
It is a contract.
“The declarations are written. The evidence is gathered. The conventions are in force. What is missing is the clause.”
And after decades of Canada-Africa cooperation, Justice Adjei’s closing challenge was unmistakable:
“Canada and Africa have intended goodwill toward one another for seventy years. It is time we write it down as partners,” he said.