The Global South is often studied, advised, measured and compared.
Its countries are frequently discussed in reports, development programmes and international conferences. Experts arrive to assess problems, recommend solutions and introduce models developed elsewhere.
Some of this work is valuable. Countries benefit from research, international cooperation and ideas that challenge familiar ways of thinking.
But what happens when we turn the question inward?
What might we learn if we took our own countries, institutions, communities and experiences seriously as sources of knowledge?
What might change if we became as curious about what is working in Ghana, Grenada, Kenya, India, Brazil or Indonesia as we are about models developed in Europe and North America?
The question is not whether the Global South should stop learning from the rest of the world.
It is whether we have paid enough attention to what the Global South might learn from itself.
Knowledge Lives Here Too
Knowledge does not exist only in universities, policy papers, consulting firms or international institutions.
It also lives in communities.
It is carried by farmers who understand changing weather patterns and the behaviour of the land.
It is held by fishers who can read the sea.
It is practised by families who have created systems of care where formal services are limited.
It is developed by entrepreneurs who build businesses despite small markets, unreliable infrastructure and restricted access to finance.
It is found in public officers who know why certain policies repeatedly fail, even when the official reports do not explain it.
It is preserved by elders, artisans, community leaders, workers and people whose expertise may never be formally recognised.
This knowledge may not always be written down.
It may not appear in the language institutions use.
It may be carried through stories, routines, relationships, craft, memory and ways of responding to difficulty that have been tested over generations.
The fact that knowledge is informal does not make it insignificant.
The fact that it is local does not mean it has nothing to offer the wider world.
When Expertise Travels in One Direction
Countries in the Global South have often been positioned as places where problems exist and expertise must be delivered.
The theory comes from elsewhere.
The consultant comes from elsewhere.
The model comes from elsewhere.
The funding conditions come from elsewhere.
The standard used to measure success may also have been created somewhere else.
This can encourage the belief that progress begins when a country adopts an external model.
Sometimes an external model is exactly what is needed. But importing an idea without understanding the place in which it must work can create another problem.
A policy developed for a large, wealthy country may not suit a small island state.
A management model built for a highly formal economy may not reflect a society where informal work supports thousands of families.
A system that assumes strong public infrastructure may fail where institutions are under-resourced.
A programme may look successful on paper while ignoring the relationships, histories and cultural expectations that shape how people actually behave.
The problem is not that the idea came from outside.
The problem arises when outside knowledge is automatically treated as superior, while local experience is overlooked.
Learning From Comparable Realities
Countries learn most easily from examples that reflect their own realities.
A small Caribbean state may find useful lessons in another small island country facing similar pressures from climate change, migration, limited markets and high import costs.
A city in Africa experiencing rapid urban growth may have more to exchange with a city in South Asia than with a European capital built under very different conditions.
Countries with large informal economies may learn from one another about taxation, social protection, entrepreneurship and access to finance.
Communities affected by hurricanes, droughts, flooding or coastal erosion may exchange practical knowledge about preparedness, recovery and adaptation.
The similarities do not need to be exact.
No two countries have the same history, culture or institutions.
The value lies in recognising comparable challenges and asking how others have responded.
What worked?
What failed?
What had to be adapted?
What was overlooked?
What would they do differently now?
These questions can shorten the distance between a problem and a workable response.
We Have Already Created Solutions
The Global South is not waiting to begin innovating.
It has already produced ideas and systems that have influenced the wider world.
Countries across Africa have helped expand the possibilities of mobile money and digital financial services.
Community health worker models across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America have shown how care can reach people beyond hospitals and major urban centres.
Caribbean countries have developed experience in disaster preparedness, hurricane recovery and regional coordination.
Cooperatives across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have enabled people to pool resources, strengthen bargaining power and build enterprises collectively.
Brazil has contributed influential approaches to participatory governance and social policy.
India has developed large-scale systems in digital identity, affordable healthcare, technology and community enterprise.
Small island states have become some of the strongest voices in international climate discussions because they understand that environmental vulnerability is not an abstract future concern.
None of these examples is perfect.
Every model has limitations, and every success must be understood within its context.
But they demonstrate an important truth:
The Global South is not only a place where solutions are needed.
It is also a place where solutions are being created.
South-South Learning Is More Than Government Cooperation
The term South-South cooperation is often used to describe collaboration among countries of the Global South.
This may include governments sharing technical knowledge, universities conducting joint research, businesses entering new markets or countries cooperating through regional and international organisations.
But learning across the Global South does not need to belong only to governments or large institutions.
It can also happen between people.
A Grenadian farmer and a Ghanaian farmer may discover common questions about climate, soil, markets and the survival of small-scale agriculture.
A Caribbean hotel manager may learn from an African tourism professional navigating similar questions about culture, service and local ownership.
A craft producer in Indonesia may have useful experience to share with an artisan in the Caribbean.
A public officer in Rwanda may understand something about institutional reform that is relevant to a colleague in Jamaica.
A researcher in India may encounter ideas in Brazil that change the way a problem is understood.
A young entrepreneur in Kenya may develop a model that could be adapted in Trinidad and Tobago.
These exchanges do not require people to pretend that their countries are the same.
They require curiosity.
They require respect.
They require the belief that knowledge can travel in more than one direction.
Learning With, Not Simply Learning From
There is an important difference between learning from someone and learning with them.
Learning from can sometimes create a hierarchy.
One person becomes the expert. The other becomes the recipient.
Learning with suggests a more equal relationship.
Both sides bring experience.
Both sides ask questions.
Both sides are capable of teaching and being taught.
This does not mean ignoring differences in expertise, resources or experience. It means refusing to assume that one side arrives full of knowledge while the other arrives empty.
The best exchanges are not acts of charity.
They are relationships in which people recognise that each has something of value to contribute.
For the Global South, this shift matters.
Our countries have often met one another through institutions created elsewhere. We may know one another through development programmes, diplomatic meetings, trade agreements or international conferences.
There is room for more direct conversation.
More practitioner-to-practitioner exchange.
More collaboration between researchers.
More relationships among artists, entrepreneurs, communities and institutions.
More opportunities to understand how other societies are solving problems we also face.
We Must Still Ask Difficult Questions
Learning from the Global South should not become another form of romanticism.
Not every local practice is wise.
Not every government programme deserves to be copied.
Not every tradition should be protected from criticism.
Countries across the Global South also experience corruption, inequality, exclusion, weak institutions, political repression and harmful social practices.
A solution developed in one Southern country can fail in another.
Power does not disappear simply because people share the label Global South.
Larger and wealthier Southern countries can dominate smaller ones. Governments can silence communities. Institutions can ignore the knowledge of their own people while celebrating South-South cooperation internationally.
We must therefore examine our own models with the same seriousness we apply to those imported from elsewhere.
What evidence supports them?
Who benefits?
Who is excluded?
Can the idea be adapted?
Does it depend on conditions that do not exist elsewhere?
What harm might it cause?
Respecting our knowledge does not mean protecting it from scrutiny.
It means believing that it is worthy of being examined, tested and developed.
Why This Matters to Sankofa
Sankofa begins with the belief that wisdom should not travel in only one direction.
This platform is interested in what people across Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, Latin America and the wider Global South already know.
Not only what their governments say in official speeches.
Not only what appears in development reports.
Not only what recognised experts publish.
We are also interested in the knowledge carried through work, memory, community, culture and lived experience.
What has a small country learned from surviving repeated disruption?
What does an organisation understand after decades of adapting to limited resources?
What has a community discovered about care when formal systems are absent?
What does an artisan know about preserving identity while responding to changing markets?
What has a public institution learned from reforms that did not work?
What ideas are emerging among young people who are trying to build a future under very different conditions from those of earlier generations?
Sankofa creates space for these conversations.
It does not begin from the assumption that every answer already exists within the Global South.
It begins from the belief that we have not listened carefully enough to discover what does.
The Distance Between Us
There are historical and geographical distances between the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Some were created by colonial routes that directed trade, education, migration and cultural attention towards Europe and North America.
As a result, countries with related histories may know surprisingly little about one another.
A person in Grenada may be familiar with public debates in the United States or Britain while knowing very little about what is being discussed in Ghana, Kenya or Rwanda.
An African entrepreneur may understand European markets better than opportunities emerging in the Caribbean.
A Caribbean professional may look to Canada for an organisational model without first asking whether a comparable institution in Africa, Asia or Latin America has addressed the same problem.
The distance is not only physical.
It is also informational.
We cannot learn from one another if we do not know what one another is doing.
This is why stories, conversations, research exchanges and personal relationships matter.
They make knowledge visible.
They introduce people who may never have encountered one another through formal systems.
They help us recognise common questions without erasing our differences.
What Might We Learn?
We might learn how communities remain connected during crisis.
We might learn how small businesses survive in restricted markets.
We might learn how societies preserve culture while adapting to change.
We might learn how informal systems support people when formal institutions fall short.
We might learn how countries respond to migration, climate vulnerability, youth unemployment, public-sector constraints and rapid technological change.
We might learn which solutions failed and why.
We might also learn that some of the questions we have treated as uniquely ours are being asked elsewhere.
That recognition can be powerful.
It can reduce isolation.
It can create collaboration.
It can remind us that we do not have to begin every search for knowledge by looking away from ourselves.
Learning to See Ourselves Differently
The deepest lesson may not be a particular policy, technology or programme.
It may be a different way of seeing ourselves.
Countries in the Global South are often described through what they lack.
They lack capital.
They lack capacity.
They lack infrastructure.
They lack strong institutions.
Many of those constraints are real and should not be minimised.
But a language focused only on absence can prevent us from seeing what is present.
Experience is present.
Ingenuity is present.
Memory is present.
Knowledge is present.
People have been adapting, creating, organising and surviving under difficult conditions for generations.
The question is not whether the Global South has knowledge.
The question is whether we recognise it, respect it and build relationships through which it can travel.
What might the Global South learn from itself?
Perhaps more than we have been encouraged to imagine.
Perhaps enough to change how we build, govern, create and learn from one another.
Perhaps enough to help the wider world learn from us as well.