Southern Voice is a network of more than 70 think tanks from 35 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, dedicated to leveraging quality local data and research to advance the development agenda. Southern Voice aims to strengthen policy-informed and actionable research, enhance collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers, and promote south-south cooperation and south-north collaboration to influence policy change, global debates, and rebalance knowledge asymmetry. It does this by producing, promoting, and disseminating evidence-based policy analysis by researchers from Global South countries.
Southern Voice has a wide experience in cross-regional research. To mention some key projects: the Challenge Fund for Evidence Use, provided financial resources for our members to implement projects driven by locally led agendas and methodologies, with a strong focus on evidence use and real-world impact. Furthermore, Southern Voice has a recurrent publication named Southern Voice State of the SDGs (SVSS) initiative, which in its first edition involved 12 research teams from Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Similarly, in its second edition, the SVSS collaborates with 10 research teams across the three regions. Most recently, Southern Voice launched Global South Perspectives (GSP), a project that brings the voices, insights, and leadership of the Global South to the forefront of policy debates. It addresses a persistent gap in the global discourse: namely, the limited space afforded to knowledge and lived experience from the Global South in informing development priorities, approaches, and outcomes.
Research Capacity:
Southern Voice has member organisations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, with experience conducting quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research in their national and regional contexts. Members engage in multi-thematic research and policy analysis, with many of them active in governance, education, gender, food security, and economic development. Some Southern Voice members also focus on singular themes, such as climate, technology, and agriculture.
Southern Voice works with their members on projects based on their strengths.
Networks/Working with partners:
Southern Voice works with its members through different research and outreach strategies. For collaborative research, the Secretariat launches research calls, organises collaborative regional research projects, and others focused primarily on global issues. Southern Voice also mobilises the knowledge of its members, by bringing them together into working groups and similar arrangements, where joint perspectives can emerge to inform policy.
Key thematic priorities:
- Governance and institutional strengthening
- Gender
- Poverty, food security, and inequalities
- Climate change
- Economic growth and innovation
- Finance for development
- Technology and artificial intelligence
- Beyond the 2030 Agenda: future thinking
Institutional Representative: Margarita Gómez, Executive Director
Margarita Gómez is the Executive Director of Southern Voice, an international organization focused on strengthening the voices of academics, researchers and policy makers from the Global South, as well as expanding their policy impact and influence internationally. Southern Voice integrates more than 70 Think Tanks located in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Margarita founded and led the People in Government Lab (PeopleGov) of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, the School’s innovation-in-government research centre aiming to improve the motivation, responsiveness, and effectiveness of people working in government. Previously, she established and led the first Behavioural Unit in Mexico and served as principal advisor to the Minister of Public Safety and Ministry of Defence in Mexico. Margarita has more than 12 years of experience working to build better governments and to design more effective public policies, with an emphasis on the Global South. She has led applied research projects on public sector transformation, women’s participation in economic activities and STEM careers, and corruption and public employees’ ethical behaviours. Margarita has also taught university and executive courses on behavioural sciences, design thinking, and organisational change in Colombia, Chile, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, and Mexico.
Currently, Margarita is a Visiting Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Senior Research Fellow at the Public Management and Technology Innovation Lab of the Autonomous University of Madrid. She is also the Behavioural Advisor of the Asian Development Bank’s Innovation Hub and founder of the Latinamente Behavioural Network. At Oxford University, she also acts as College Advisor at St Antony’s College and Affiliate at the Latin American Centre. Margarita also represents Southern Voice in the United Nations Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board and is a member of the High-level Expert Group of GIZ’s partner orientation.
Southern Voice is a network of more than 70 think tanks from 35 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, dedicated to leveraging quality local data and research to advance the development agenda. Southern Voice aims to strengthen policy-informed and actionable research, enhance collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers, and promote south-south cooperation and south-north collaboration to influence policy change, global debates, and rebalance knowledge asymmetry. It does this by producing, promoting, and disseminating evidence-based policy analysis by researchers from Global South countries. Southern Voice has a wide experience in cross-regional research. To mention some key projects:…