Su Lyn Corcoran
In this article, Su reflects on working within a system that ultimately does not trust the partner organisations with which she collaborates on educational research and practice-based projects.
Spending overseas development aid
Given the cost-of-living crisis and rising levels of homelessness in the UK, the government has faced criticism in the mass media for its commitment to overseas development aid (ODA). However, the media has rarely mentioned the fact that much of the money intended for ODA never even leaves the UK.
Through my work with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academic research, I have noticed that restrictions on how ODA is spent privilege the donor country. Restrictions also make equal partnerships between individual collaborators hard to maintain.
Here’s an example: motorbikes requested for project outreach workers, so they could reach remote rural destinations, had to be purchased from UK suppliers. When the bikes needed repair, the parts were not available locally, and it was so expensive to order them that the bikes became unusable. Such restrictions and conditions requiring purchases from the donor country are not unusual.
There are often restrictions on who can apply for ODA funds. Organisations registered in the UK may be the only ones eligible, so community-based organisations in countries receiving ODA must partner with international NGOs and academic institutions or have UK-based head offices. Ultimately, this means a percentage of the ODA money stays in the UK to pay UK staff wages.
Funding for research
When funding is directed towards research in countries receiving ODA, researchers in UK universities usually lead the projects in partnership with universities and organisations in other countries. The overseas university can occasionally lead the project, but the UK-based university must have a key role. Some funders dictate minimum time allocations for the lead UK researchers, ensuring that a significant amount of money stays in the UK.
Universities calculate a standardised amount for a researcher’s time, to cover both wages and ‘estate charges’, so the wage costs for a UK research team far exceed the money allocated to overseas research partners. After covering the UK costs, there may be limited funding left to pay for collaborators’ time in the country of focus.
Administration costs
When budgeting, the UK research funding system applies algorithms to calculate the overhead costs universities should add to their daily rates. Conversely, non-governmental and community-based organisations – perceived as charities in receipt of charitable giving – must continually justify why they should be allowed to use funding to pay core costs. They are often criticised or prevented from adding these costs to funding bids or limited to overheads of just 7% of the total budget.
Therefore, many small organisations feel obliged to show that they operate with little or no charitable donations being used for core costs, so as not to alienate the public. While their position is understandable, it can undermine organisations campaigning to convince funders that admin and management work is time-consuming and essential for effective projects and must be paid for.
Here’s a simple example: you can’t have a project without a contract between the funder and recipient, but someone in the recipient organisation has to read, check, comment on and sign that contract. If the funder won’t pay for the time taken to do this, how is the organisation supposed to find another donor willing to pay for that time? And, more importantly, why do the lighting bills in a university matter more than the wage bills in a charity?
Challenges to equal partnerships
Timelines
The typically short timeframe for ODA applications is a significant problem. Institutions push academics to pursue as many funding bids as possible, leading to many project plans being quickly thrown together to meet tight bidding deadlines. This hinders collaborative partnerships.
For example, during an initial meeting with colleagues at an African university we asked what they thought the project should look like. They were surprised because, in their experience, the UK partner would usually develop the idea and budget in advance and then invite collaboration, rather than working as a team to develop the submission.
Such approaches are inevitable, given the short lead-in times for many funding calls. But if the project is not developed in collaboration with our partners, how can we be sure it is appropriate to the context and that members of the project team are equally invested in the project and feel valued?
Digital divide
Once a project has begun, other challenges to equal partnership emerge. First come the inevitable problems with technology and connectivity. Partners need to stay in touch regularly, but available bandwidth is often insufficient for online platforms like Microsoft Teams. In some areas, connectivity and meetings are affected by rain and
(un)scheduled power cuts.
The climate crisis requires us to reduce the amount of international travel by UK project partners, and collaborators need the autonomy to deliver projects without us being regularly on site. Therefore, we must connect digitally, and funders expect good communication between partners. Yet they also often restrict capital costs such as new laptops, smartphones, and the infrastructure for good WiFi connections.
Due diligence
When ODA designated research funding is awarded to a UK university, they must then check the trustworthiness of their partners overseas. I worked with a partner organisation a few years ago that had a UK bank account, and we paid them through that. I am now working with them again and their UK bank account no longer exists, so they are no longer deemed automatically trustworthy. The partner must complete a 12-page form detailing their financial and official particulars.
Why should holding a UK bank account mean they were more trustworthy in the past? Their work has not changed and their staff have not changed. My relationship with them has lasted ten years yet they must now complete a comprehensive due diligence check that was not needed before.
Time for change
In this article I’ve provided a snapshot of the issues that have arisen in the projects and partnerships I’ve worked on. Other researchers will recount other challenges. When there are systems in place that create an administrative hierarchy, the horizontal ways of working that we try to develop with our partners are affected.
If funders and research institutions genuinely want to enable equal partnerships and support the capacity of researchers and practitioners in countries of the global south, then policies and procedures need reform, and we, as researchers and practitioners, should be able to demand change and not just accept ‘this is how it has to be done’.
Su Corcoran is a research associate at Manchester Metropolitan University and Research advisor for EENET. She can be contacted via the EENET office.