At the start of my masters, I read the most brilliant publication by @seyeabimbola about the power asymmetries that result in continued authorship by local academic writers in global health for the foreign gaze. At the time it was reading for a module, now, it’s so much more.

In the months since I was elected LSHTM Student body president, I have held numerous discussions about how to strip our institution of colonist ideals.
While we continue to work for ways that we can set DGH initiatives in our institutional context,

I am reminded of the ‘foreign gaze’ and how our 'need' to produce research that appeals to contexts outside of our own, may play a factor in how African health is perceived and taught by the global health community.

If we answer questions through means that are funded by vested interests, how can we ask questions most important to our lived experiences?
If we need to publish in international journals for visibility, what is the fate of our own voices on matters that are most important to us?

I think that to truly decolonise global health, we must first take charge of how we are perceived and consequently, portrayed by the global community. We must frame our own questions, fund our own research and tell our own stories.