Identity

Who we are

The North-South Centre is a competence centre representing the ETH Zurich in all its disciplines related to North-South collaboration. It was founded in 2007, and became legally functional as of Jan 1, 2008. It incorporates the activities of the former Swiss Centre for International Agriculture (ZIL) and the former Network for International Development and Cooperation (NIDECO).

Membership of the North-South Centre is open to all interested professors and scientists of the ETH Zurich who are actively involved in research partnerships with developing countries or whose research activities include North-South questions and international development and cooperation. At present, the North-South Centre has about 120 members and associated members across a wide range of institutes and departments.

Our tasks

Based on the vision and mission, the North-South Centre engages in the following tasks:

• It initiates and realises projects and programmes of research collaboration with partners in developing countries and emerging economies.
• It initiates and supports activities in capacity development at the individual and institutional level.
• It establishes and maintains contacts among its members, with other research institutions and with development agencies.
• It organises interdisciplinary events, disseminates development-relevant research results, and informs about North-South related activities of the ETH Zurich.
• It increases the awareness of North-South matters within the ETH Zurich and contributes to enhancing the role of North-South questions in research and education.

Our approach

The approach of the North-South Centre is consistent with “Research for development” (R4D). The R4D approach has received broad acceptance in the development community over the last few years. It is characterised as being demanddriven, of direct relevance for development, and solutionoriented. The research design calls for envisioning the potential impact. R4D integrates various players along the knowledge generation chain from basic to applied research, and to implementing agencies and institutions. It is thus transdisciplinary in nature. The ETH Zurich contribution is usually close to the basic research side of this chain and involves strategic partners to connect it to the implementation side.

Projects involving research partners from developing countries have to be based on the principles released by the Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries, KFPE.

Guiding principles for North-South related research

The North-South Centre builds on the comparative advantage of ETH Zurich as one of the leading technical universities worldwide. It uses the competences of its members and their disciplinary strengths. Basic requirements for adequate responses to societies’ demands are:

• High scientific relevance and quality (excellence);
• High global relevance;
• And at the same time high development relevance.

In addition, all research activities have to follow the guiding principles of the North-South Centre:

• Analysis of the problem on a demand-driven basis
• Innovation and engineering knowledge adapted to the development context
• Adaptation to environmental and social change
• Anticipation of future challenges