The discussion, happening on October 29, 1:30 pm GMT, features Dr Millicent Adjei of Ashesi University in Ghana and Dr Jimena Hurtado of Universidad de los Andes in Colombia , with journalist Ismail Akwei as moderator.

Watch here:

Dr Adjei, Director of International Programs and Campus Cohesion at Ashesi University, specialises in higher education policies that improve outcomes for first-generation and economically disadvantaged African students. Dr Hurtado represents Teaching and Researching Equitable Economics from the South (TREES), an initiative focused on economics education and research from a Global South perspective.

The speakers will examine access to higher education, educational inequality, graduate unemployment and whether university curricula adequately reflect local economic and social realities.

Artificial intelligence will also feature in the conversation, particularly its impact on learning, independent thinking, educational inequality and future employment opportunities in developing economies.

Other topics include research funding, brain drain, international academic partnerships and opportunities for stronger collaboration between universities in the Global South.

Watch the previous Global South Thinkers discussion

On August 19, 1978, Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, was set ablaze during a screening of The Deer . Hundreds of moviegoers were trapped inside, with approximately 470 people reportedly killed. The tragedy intensified public anger against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Many initially blamed his secret police, SAVAK, although subsequent investigations implicated religiously motivated arsonists. The fire became a powerful symbol of the unrest that culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

But the revolution brought a new threat to Iranian cinema. Under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic viewed much of the existing film industry as morally corrupt. Cinemas faced widespread closures, and filmmakers feared their industry could disappear entirely.

Then came " The Cow ". A movie directed by Dariush Mehrjui in 1969, the surreal drama follows a villager whose beloved cow dies, leaving him so devastated that he begins believing he is the animal. After Khomeini watched the film on television, he reportedly praised its moral and educational qualities. This single endorsement helped establish that cinema itself was not inherently incompatible with Islamic values.

Iranian film making survived, but it was forced to operate under strict new censorship codes enforced by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The restrictions were unyielding. Women on screen were required to wear the hijab at all times even in domestic scenes where characters were sleeping or alone with family. Physical contact between unrelated men and women was strictly forbidden; onscreen couples could not touch, hold hands, or embrace. Furthermore, any direct criticism of government or religious authorities was strictly outlawed.

Rather than abandon film making, directors developed brilliant, creative ways to navigate these restrictions. Ironically, the regime itself helped fuel this creativity. In 1983, the government established the Farabi Cinema Foundation to fund a new "pure," anti-Hollywood national cinema. Independent directors used this state funding, equipment, and infrastructure to craft deeply artistic independent masterpieces.

To bypass the censors, filmmakers mastered a style known as "poetic realism." The legendary director Abbas Kiarostame pioneered this movement, frequently telling profound stories through the innocent perspective of children . By focusing on simple, everyday human struggles, Kiarostami and his peers created globally acclaimed films that completely bypassed political or religious censorship. To depict romance without physical contact, directors relied on heavy symbolism, intense lingering glances, or couples communicating through mirrors to represent distance.

Yet, censorship and persecution have never truly stopped, transforming modern Iranian film making into a high-stakes underground resistance. When director Jafar Panahi was placed under house arrest and banned from making movies, he famously shot " This is Not a Film " on an iPhone and smuggled the documentary out of Iran on a flash drive hidden inside a cake to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. More recently, director Mohammad Rasoulof shot his acclaimed drama " The Seed of the Sacred Fig " in total secrecy using hidden locations and walkie-talkies to avoid police raids, before ultimately fleeing the country on foot over the mountains to attend its international premiere.

Iranian cinema's history reveals an extraordinary contradiction, that the very restrictions designed to control filmmakers also inspired some of the world's most inventive and resilient storytelling.

Click here for previous episodes

ISSN 2978-4891

The reason begins with what English unlocks. In India, researchers using the India Human Development Survey found that men who speak English fluently earn about 34% more per hour than men who speak none, and even a little English carried a 13% premium. That fluency bonus is roughly on par with finishing secondary school. English does not make anyone smarter, of course. What it gives people is access: to better universities, to multinational employers, and to international clients. Let's see how this proves true in the Global South.

The Philippines shows how far this can go with its outsourcing industry, which currently employs around 1.6 million people and earns roughly $32 billion a year, partly because of its large English-speaking workforce .

That access exists because of colonial history , and independence did not undo it. Pakistan's constitution set 1988 as the deadline for replacing English with Urdu, yet English still dominates higher education, law, and corporate life today. Kenya kept English's prestige after independence, and in 2025, Nigeria reaffirmed it as the language of instruction from primary school to university, pointing to its 500-plus indigenous languages and a shortage of teachers and materials. Once a country's schools, offices, and courts are built around a language, letting go of it becomes very difficult.

Of course, a language that opens doors raises another question: who gets to learn it well? Wealthy families raise children speaking English at home and send them to English-medium schools. Poorer families want the same advantage but often cannot reach it. In Islamabad, private schooling can cost $80 to $140 a month, while the median monthly wage in Pakistan is about $120. And after all that investment, there is still the IELTS exam, which costs around $270, more than two months of that median wage, just to confirm what thirteen years of English schooling had already proven.

Even then, fluency may not be enough. A meta-analysis of 139 findings found that candidates with standard accents were rated more hireable, partly because listeners read the accent as a sign of social status. The effect reaches online, too. Also, a study of 5,367 TED Talks found that speakers with non-native accents received less engagement, even after accounting for topic and fame, because of stereotypes and the extra effort of processing an unfamiliar accent.

All of this feeds a loop. That is, English brings opportunity, so families who can afford it invest in English-medium schooling. Their children grow up more fluent and more comfortable, which helps them land better jobs, and eventually they raise their own children in English from birth. English can be a ladder to mobility, but some people are born halfway up it.

None of this means English itself is the villain. It connects a Filipino call centre worker to an American company and gives a Nigerian academic an international audience. The trouble starts when we mistake access to English, or a particular accent, for intelligence. One is ability, the other is opportunity.

So the question is not only what an English accent is worth. It is who can afford to acquire one.

Click here for previous episodes

ISSN 2978-4891

The answer may not always lie in the world's most powerful AI systems. Countries across the region are at very different stages of technological development. Some have advanced research capabilities and large digital economies, while others are still building data centres, digital networks, and a skilled workforce needed to make AI work at scale.

This is creating a new dimension of South-South cooperation. BRICS countries, with their diverse technological capabilities and development experiences, are increasingly developing and sharing AI technologies, expertise and applications with other emerging and developing economies.

Rather than simply transferring one-size-fits-all technologies, these efforts are being adapted to local infrastructure, economic conditions and development priorities.

The result is more about asking where AI can make the biggest difference.

Bringing medical expertise closer

Across much of the Global South, where medical resources are often concentrated in major cities, access to timely and quality healthcare can depend on where a person lives. For people in rural and remote areas, seeing a specialist may require travelling hundreds of kilometres, as local clinics may lack the equipment or expertise needed for an accurate diagnosis.

AI is beginning to offer a way to narrow this gap, helping extend medical expertise beyond the walls of well-equipped hospitals.

In China, Xunfei Healthcare has developed AI-powered tools that assist doctors with clinical decision-making, medical records and prescription reviews, and medical imaging.

The company is now taking some of these technologies abroad. In June, it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Indonesia's PT DSST Mas Gemilang to deploy AI healthcare solutions, including AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment, public-health monitoring and medical imaging. The cooperation combines China's experience in large-scale AI applications with Indonesia's local infrastructure and healthcare needs.

Another similar form of South-South technology diffusion can be seen in India's Qure.ai . Its qXR system uses AI to analyse chest X-rays for signs of tuberculosis and other abnormalities. It has since been deployed in more than 60 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, helping healthcare workers identify patients who may require further testing in places where specialist radiologists are in short supply.

From satellites to early warnings

For communities on the front lines of climate change , a disaster often arrives faster than help can. Floods can sweep through farmland, storms can destroy homes, and droughts can wipe out crops before communities have time to respond. But AI is helping turn that early warning into a reality.

At this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, the China Meteorological Administration unveiled the MAZU-Fengyun Satellite AI Toolbox.

By combining satellite-data reception, AI inference and multi-source data fusion, the meteorological toolbox can help improve monitoring and early warning for extreme weather and other meteorological hazards.

Customised MAZU systems have already been deployed in seven countries, including Pakistan, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka, helping countries vulnerable to floods, droughts and other extreme weather events strengthen their early-warning capabilities. More than 40 other countries are also accessing related MAZU services through cloud-based platforms.

Pakistani State Minister Bilal Bin Saqib said the MAZU Satellite AI Toolbox could provide smarter meteorological early-warning services for countries in the Global South, helping protect crops, strengthen food security and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Helping farmers make better decisions

For many countries in the Global South, agriculture accounts for a large share of economic activity. AI is offering farmers and agricultural researchers new ways to make better decisions, from how much fertiliser to apply to which seeds are most likely to survive a changing climate.

In Namibia, Chinese agricultural experts found that poor soil conditions and inappropriate fertiliser use were contributing to low agricultural productivity. To address the problem, they introduced a smart agricultural management system in 2025 that can generate tailored fertilisation plans after farmers enter information about their soil. The system has been described as an "agricultural navigator," offering farmers guidance based on the specific conditions of their land.

AI is also changing one of the most time-consuming stages of agriculture: cultivating better seeds.

Traditional seed selection can take eight to ten years of experimentation, followed by additional years of promotion before a new variety reaches farmers. AI can dramatically shorten this process by analysing large amounts of data quickly and more accurately.

Chen Xin, president of the Society for the Advancement of Breeding Research in Asia and Oceania, said AI can improve the precision of selecting seeds that are more resistant to pests, diseases and more tolerant of high temperatures. It can also help researchers identify promising combinations for hybridisation, accelerating the search for varieties suited to changing environmental conditions.

The technology is increasingly being adapted to local needs. In Thailand and Myanmar, for example, optimised bean varieties are being developed to better match local growing conditions and agricultural demands.

Financing AI-powered development

Technology alone cannot transform public services. AI systems need digital networks, computing infrastructure and other physical and institutional foundations, all of which require investment.

The New Development Bank (NDB), established by the BRICS countries in 2014 and beginning operations in 2015, provides financing for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS member countries and other emerging-market and developing economies. Its portfolio has increasingly included projects involving digital infrastructure and technology-driven public services.

In Brazil, the bank is supporting the development of a new generation of public healthcare infrastructure. Earlier this year, the NDB approved a $320 million loan for the first public smart hospital in São Paulo. The hospital is designed to combine advanced medical services with technologies including artificial intelligence, an AI-supported comprehensive diagnosis platform and online consultations.

For developing countries, the challenge is not only gaining access to AI technology, but also building the infrastructure and connected systems that allow that technology to be used at scale. By financing such projects, the NDB can help turn AI from an emerging technology into a tool embedded in essential public services.

During this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for countries to “carry out extensive international cooperation and help Global South countries with capacity building to bridge the AI and digital divides, promote sustainable development, and prevent creating new historical injustice in AI.”

He has also called for a consensus-based global governance framework “to make this frontier technology better benefit humanity.”

For countries across the Global South, this means more than gaining access to the latest AI models. Cooperation can help them share technologies, expertise and development experience while adapting AI solutions to local conditions.

For more than six billion people across the region, its success may be judged by a more immediate measure: whether AI can help deliver better healthcare, protect livelihoods, strengthen food security and give communities a better chance to prepare for the challenges ahead.

The article solely represents the views of Chen Ziqi, a Beijing-based journalist with CGTN, known for covering cross-cultural and international stories.

"Indonesia does not want to join any military alliance, but we seek to join economic alliance. Our FTA within the Eurasian Economic Union is exactly that - not an alliance against anyone, but a partnership for the prosperity of everyone," he said.

Prabowo said Indonesia would continue engaging with countries in all directions as "a sovereign and equal partner," adding that Jakarta's foreign policy was based on friendship rather than confrontation.

"For us, 1,000 friends are too few. One enemy is too many," he said.

He also rejected the idea that the Global South should be seen as a new geopolitical bloc, describing it instead as a grouping seeking greater fairness in the international system.

"The Global South is not a new bloc. It is a constituency for fairness, for a fair share of prosperity, and a fair voice in writing global rules," Prabowo said.

The issue is about much more than money, according to the panellists.

Namdiero said a payout on its own would only be a sticking plaster. Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank need to be reformed to give Global South nations more influence, she said.

"The important question is not what might be owed, but what needs to be changed so that the conditions that allowed slavery to happen no longer exist," she said.

Some of the legacies of slavery are less obvious. In some countries, laws restrict "noise-making" — yet drumming and singing have always been central to African cultures that slavery sought to erase.

Education systems that teach the benefits of colonialism also ensure the legacy of slavery continues to cause harm today, Namdiero said.

But financing must be part of the discussion too.

"Debt relief is a major concern. We have to look at the fact that almost immediately after independence, when all of the wealth had been sucked out of Africa and the Caribbean, they are shoving IMF deals on us," McMorris said.

The panel also discussed gender, which forms a growing part of the demand to unpick the legacy of slavery.

"Colonialism wasn't just a project of conquest, it was also a reorganisation of power in African countries," Namdiero said. "And we didn't get to write our own history," McMorris agreed.

The panellists pointed to UN research showing that women today do several times more unpaid work than men.

Who should bear responsibility?

Colonialism was never the work of a single actor. The governments of colonial powers need to take up their responsibilities, but churches and missionaries also played their part, as did financial institutions.

Namdiero identified three groups that need to respond to the claims of the victims of slavery:

Those groups need to make amends by taking responsibility and by acting on it, the panellists said.

"I'd disagree that apologies have been abundant. What I would say is that people have been throwing out words," said McMorris.

Mia McMorris is a Junior Research Fellow at the Centre for Reparation Research, The University of the West Indies. She holds an MA in Public History from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a BA in History from The University of the West Indies, Mona. A 2024 United Nations Fellow for People of African Descent, her research spans reparatory justice, gender, Caribbean history and colonial legacies. She has presented at international conferences on CARICOM development goals, Jamaican rum history, legal reparation, and food and nutritional histories, at forums including Columbia University, Northeastern University and the Caribbean Studies Association. Her public history work includes authoring the walking trail Women Feeding Boston, writing for the Jamaica Gleaner, and presenting the radio show History for Tomorrow.

Lavender Namdiero is a human rights advocate with more than eight years' experience campaigning for social, cultural and economic justice across Africa. From grassroots organising to global advocacy, she has worked at the intersection of activism and policy, amplifying voices too often left out of the room. She has led and supported campaigns on food justice, political inclusion, reparative justice and racial equity through roles at the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, Amnesty International and other movement spaces. Her work on reparative justice focuses on advancing African-led advocacy for historical accountability, repair and transformative justice, while challenging the enduring legacies of colonialism and systemic inequality.

She brings a decolonial and feminist lens to her work, building coalitions, shaping narratives and mobilising collective action. She currently works to advance racial and gender justice across the continent, connecting grassroots movements, research and policy advocacy to strengthen demands for justice and systemic transformation. She holds a Master's degree in Human Rights from Central European University and believes deeply in the power of African communities to tell their own stories, reclaim their histories and shape their own futures with joy, courage and creativity.

Countries once overlooked in global labour rankings are now setting bold new standards for paternity leave, offering fathers time to bond with their newborns and share caregiving responsibilities from day one.

According to the IRIS Global Parental Leave Index , Peru, Laos, Rwanda, Comoros, and Benin lead the way, granting some of the world’s longest paid paternity leaves among developing nations.

Peru tops the list with 21 weeks, followed by Laos with 17 weeks, Rwanda with 16, Comoros with 15, and Benin offering 12 weeks

These numbers stand out in a world where the average paid paternity leave remains under two weeks, and only about 53% of countries legally guarantee fathers any paid time off at all.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) notes that leave policies specifically designed for fathers can be a game changer in reducing gender inequality at work and home, improving child well-being, and reshaping social norms around caregiving

In countries like Rwanda, where gender equality is part of national development goals, expanding paternity leave reflects a deeper social commitment. Similarly, Peru’s 21-week provision—the highest in the Global South—signals that progressive family policy is not the preserve of wealthy nations.

In Laos, Comoros, and Benin, these reforms also highlight how smaller economies are prioritizing family welfare and gender balance despite limited resources.

Globally, the push for longer parental leave gained momentum during and after the COVID-19 pandemic , as workplaces grappled with new norms around remote work and caregiving.

In many high-income countries, cultural and professional barriers still limit men’s participation in parental leave. But in the Global South, legal reforms are moving faster than societal skepticism, showing that ambition, not affluence, drives change.