Lab · South-South cooperation
The Southern Compass Lab orients our attention toward the realities and solutions of the Global South. This lab documents, with rigor, the issues that directly affect the daily lives of young people across Africa and beyond.
Analyses written by YouthShare contributors, on the questions this lab works on.
Water scarcity is primarily a crisis of effective governance, not just physical supply (SDG 6). Systemic weakness and ambiguous accountability perpetuate this issue. Solutions require strengthening governance (SDG 16) by empowering grassroots organizations to drive systemic policy change through knowledge and collaboration (SDG 17).
Global trade disputes have silenced Maseru’s textile factories, leaving families in Thetsane to face poverty, migration, and loss. This story reveals the devastating human cost behind the global garment industry and the urgent need for local economic resilience.
Innovation is essential to transform African agriculture and combat climate change. By combining new technologies, better infrastructure, and climate-smart practices, smallholder farmers can build resilience, ensure food security, and drive sustainable economic growth.
Topics open to contributors, detailed on the research avenues page. Your own idea is welcome too.
See the avenues in detailThis lab is part of the association’s new organization around five labs. It carries a simple conviction: solutions concerning the Global South are documented and carried by the young people who live there. Its output feeds directly into the other labs, particularly The New Agora Lab on advocacy and The New Forge Lab on field training.
The Southern Compass Lab works on several fronts at once: local data, correspondent training, direct advocacy, and networking. Combining them strengthens the credibility of every brief we publish.
Every country in the network relies on a young correspondent trained in the Southern Compass Lab’s data collection and analysis method.
Every brief relies on verified field data and a transparent methodology, published alongside the findings.
The conclusions of each study are shared with the relevant local and regional institutions, in coordination with The New Agora Lab.
The lab connects correspondents with each other to compare findings and build a shared understanding.
Expand the network to every country where YouthShare is already present, then beyond.
Bring together every brief published each year into a summary report open to all.
Measure the lab’s real impact through the concrete adoption of its findings in public policy.
Turn the Southern Compass Lab’s method into a transferable skill for new correspondents each year.
Every output of the Southern Compass Lab fits into one of YouthShare’s five forms of action.
Research, advocacy, mentorship, international dialogue, foresight: see how the Southern Compass Lab combines several of these forms of action, alongside the four other labs.
See What we doA question, a wish to contribute to a brief, or simply an interest in joining the lab? Write to us, we reply personally.
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