In the context of the failure of past development efforts, and the knowledge asymmetry between North and South, this brief examines the concept of demand-led research. Southern nations require support from the North to build capacity, but they face an uphill task in realizing the capabilities necessary to identify and rectify what Amartya Sen calls ‘patent injustices’. For example, poverty, gender, inequality and other such deprivations.1 Demand-led research can generate knowledge that will empower individuals and enable them to acquire the capabilities necessary to make informed choices of their own, without intellectual inputs from the North. Nevertheless, to create the basic minimum conditions upon which these capabilities can be built, NorthSouth collaboration is critical. Governments and policymakers in both the North and the South, as well as institutions of higher learning and research, have important roles to play in the process of generating knowledge, and in building the capacities and congenial atmosphere for demand-led research for sustainable development in the South.

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