In this interview, Isabel Günther, Professor of Development Economics at ETH Zurich, explains why higher education is a catalyst for Africa’s social and economic transformation - and why a global perspective strengthens the impact of research.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals emphasise scientific cooperation as a key part of global partnerships. How can such collaboration help drive development in low-income countries?
Isabel Günther: At ETH for Development (ETH4D), we focus on two types of partnership. First, partnership between academia, government, industry and civil society can stimulate innovation to help achieve development goals. As budgets for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals decline, this kind of innovation becomes ever more vital, because it enables us to have a bigger impact with the same financial resources. In our case, that means improving people’s living conditions. Second, partnership between universities helps strengthen higher education in partner countries and train the next generation of leaders and researchers. The innovation and technological advances that emerge from universities are often the bedrock of a country’s growing prosperity. At the same time, research partnerships and international collaboration also strengthen global relations for ETH and for Switzerland as a whole.
What’s the current situation regarding higher education in countries of the Global South?
Almost every child now has access to primary education, and many also attend secondary school - but it’s a very different picture when it comes to university-level education. In low-income countries, only around 10 percent of people enter higher education, and the picture is even worse at Master’s level. In Switzerland, around 20 percent of the population holds a Master’s degree; in most African countries, it’s less than 1 percent. This is a major problem - not only for the economy, but also for universities themselves, which need graduates with a Master’s degree or doctorate to teach future generations of students.
Why do so few people go on to higher education?
For a long time, many governments simply didn’t regard investing in higher education as a priority. It was much the same in Switzerland, at least in the early days: governments initially focus on primary education, then expand secondary education and only later develop higher education. But we can speed up this process considerably by establishing global research and teaching partnerships.
In the past, this kind of research collaboration was often unequal and still tends to be asymmetrical today. How can we create more balanced partnerships that benefit both sides?
This is indeed still a challenge, starting with the imbalance in financial resources each party has at their disposal. In addition, colleagues at African universities often have much heavier teaching loads than we do. For a research partnership to be symmetrical, you need to jointly define the research question from the outset, allocate funding transparently and agree early on how authorship of academic publications will be handled. But even more important for addressing asymmetries in global research is to keep increasing the number of partnerships between researchers in Switzerland and the Global South.
How does research itself benefit from this type of cooperation?
There used to be a belief that technology could be developed in Switzerland and then simply rolled out elsewhere. That’s why I struggle with the idea of international knowledge transfer - because it’s not a straightforward transfer. Take the climate, for instance: in many countries, the conditions are completely different to those in Switzerland. Or the fact that much of the tech we develop relies on a stable electricity supply, which other countries don’t have. Logistics are another issue: if researchers develop a new technology for rural Africa, they need to ensure from the outset that it uses as few consumables as possible - and that these are available locally. These examples show how research can benefit from being grounded in a real-world context from day one. Moreover, our aim here at ETH is to develop solutions to global challenges, and for that you need a well-oiled international research network that doesn’t exclude more than half of the world. You can’t solve global problems at a purely national level. Pandemics don’t stop at borders; many Swiss companies work, produce and sell globally - and the energy transition in Switzerland relies on critical minerals in low-income countries. Besides, different perspectives generally lead to both faster solutions and new questions.
All this requires researchers to venture into uncharted territory and take risks. Does this make research projects more complex?
These kinds of projects do tend to take longer. There’s always a risk that they won’t proceed exactly as planned, and the coordination is more challenging. That’s why special formats and funding instruments are needed to get this type of research off the ground. However, it’s worth it in the end, because the results are often far more relevant for everyone involved.
How does ETH4D support this kind of research?
We support our members in three main ways. First, we help them establish partnerships - for instance, with the ICRC, NGOs or universities across Africa. Many researchers have ideas about how their area of research could contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but they lack local partners to put those ideas into practice. That’s where ETH4D’s network comes in. Second, we raise funds to help finance this type of research project, which is typically a bit riskier, involves many different stakeholders and requires more coordination. Third, we promote global academic exchange by bringing more researchers from low-income countries to Zurich and sending more researchers to African universities. In addition, we encourage networking within ETH by bringing together researchers from different disciplines with similar humanitarian interests who might not otherwise have met. Interest in research with a global reach is particularly strong among newly appointed professors, many of whom are now members of ETH4D.
The call for research with a social impact has grown louder in recent years. How do you define and measure such impact?
Put simply, social impact is when research results lead to timely, tangible improvements in people’s living conditions - for instance, in terms of energy access or healthcare. ETH4D’s main focus is on research that has a social impact on a global scale - that is, a tangible effect on the 60 percent of the world’s population who have to live on less than ten dollars a day. ETH4D doesn’t try to force every single research collaboration into this framework, as research outcomes are never entirely predictable, but we can certainly increase the likelihood that projects will have global social impact.
About
Isabel Günther is Professor of Development Economics at ETH Zurich. She is the spokesperson of ETH for Development ( ETH4D ) and study director of the MAS and CAS ETH in Global Cooperation and Sustainable Development ( NADEL ). Since 2024, she has held the role of president of the Swiss Alliance for Global Research Partnerships at the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT).
Are there areas where ETH Zurich can have a particularly strong social impact?
Engineering and natural sciences are the main ones. But the spectrum of topics addressed by ETH4D is incredibly broad, ranging from the energy transition, climate protection and adaptation, and water supply right through to education, health and artificial intelligence.
How can AI be used in the humanitarian sector?
Education and healthcare are two promising fields, as both suffer from severe staff shortages in low-income countries. In rural healthcare settings, for example, malaria is often misdiagnosed, leading to over-prescription of medication. If AI can help community health workers make more accurate diagnoses, that’s clearly beneficial. The same goes for education: to teachers who have to manage a classroom of 50 children, AI can make a real difference. Another useful application of AI is in the analysis of satellite data during humanitarian crises - for instance, to estimate population density more accurately. In conflict situations, this can help ensure that aid reaches the right places more quickly. As part of the ETH-ICRC partnership, researchers have already completed important projects that are having a significant impact.
You’re involved in running the joint Master’s programme established by ETH Zurich and Ashesi University in Ghana. What have you learnt from this cooperation?
Everyone who has lectured there - myself included - has been inspired by working with such brilliant engineers from across Africa. They put an enormous effort into their education and are really motivated to help advance the process of sustainable industrialisation on the African continent. The discussions with them are genuinely enriching. Another interesting aspect was that we were working with Swiss companies from the very beginning. They’re keen to recruit engineers from African countries to develop their research and development units on the continent, and they also offer scholarships for students at Ashesi.
Is there anything you would do differently in hindsight?
Our cooperation with Ashesi has been a great success, and we’ve learnt some important lessons. Joint teaching by staff from different universities is clearly a key factor in improving the quality of higher education worldwide. Based on our experience with Ashesi, we’re currently in discussions with universities in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa - as well as with a second university in Ghana - about jointly developing other degree programmes. However, we will no longer offer double Master’s degrees from both institutions, as we simply don’t have the capacity. Instead, we will contribute to Master’s and doctoral programmes (and potentially joint CAS programmes) at our partner universities.
When it comes to training skilled professionals in the Global South, a common concern is "brain drain" - the fear that well-educated young people will simply move to a country where they can earn more money and enjoy better career opportunities. What’s your view?
I think "brain gain" is a better term, for several reasons. First, research thrives on exchange and therefore also on migration - you only need to cast your eyes around ETH to see that. Second, the whole theory of brain drain doesn’t really hold water. Recent research shows that even if some graduates do emigrate, there is a net brain gain because many other graduates of new programmes remain in their home country. Third, at ETH we aim to address global challenges. From that perspective, it doesn’t really matter where graduates go on to work - whether for international NGOs or European companies. What matters is that they bring a global perspective to their work. And that’s something we try to instil in our students at ETH too. Of the first cohort of the ETH-Ashesi programme, 20 graduates are now working in industry in various African countries. One graduate has just begun a doctorate at ETH in order to become a lecturer in Ghana. I think that’s an excellent outcome.
