u'GOOD Conference 2025: Global South takes the lead in advancing youth wellbeing

The National Research Foundation (NRF), in partnership with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and Fondation Botnar, co-hosted the Inaugural u’GOOD Annual Conference 2025 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 06 to 09 October 2025. Themed Global South Takes the Lead in Advancing Youth Wellbeing, it marked the first large-scale Global South-led effort to understand and advance youth wellbeing, through research undertaken with African and majority-world lenses.

Launched in 2023, u’GOOD is a five-year research partnership between South Africa’s NRF and HSRC and Fondation Botnar of Switzerland. The programme focuses on the relational wellbeing of young people aged 10 to 24 living in urban and peri-urban environments across nine countries in the Global South—Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Romania, South Africa, Tanzania and Vietnam.

By the end of this century, more than eight out of 10 people in the world, many of them youth, will live in Africa and Asia. Yet, most research on youth and wellbeing continues to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North. This imbalance is now beginning to shift.

The three-day event spotlighted the u’GOOD research programme, which has been designed to deepen understanding of relational wellbeing—a framework that examines how people’s relationships with others, their communities and their environments shape their realities and life chances.

“For far too long, the Global North has been talking about us instead of with us,” said Professor Sharlene Swartz, academic programme lead of u’GOOD and divisional executive at the HSRC, speaking at the event. “This conference signals a change in direction—one where Africa and the wider Global South define their own research priorities and shape their own futures.”

The programme funds 23 research projects across four key themes, i.e. livelihoods, mental health, digitalisation and climate change, with the aim of building a strong community of practice that supports collaboration and shared learning across countries.

Dr Patrick Nonjola, u’GOOD programme leader and manager in the International Grants and Partnership directorate at the NRF said, “We are no longer content to be participants in someone else’s agenda. Through u’GOOD, African and Global South researchers are setting their own questions, defining their own methodologies and working directly with young people to shape solutions that make sense in their contexts.”

Said Dr Aline Cossy-Gantner, portfolio manager of mental health at Fondation Botnar, “True partnership means listening differently. It means recognising that innovation often comes from places that have had to struggle, adapt, and imagine new ways to thrive. The Global South is not a passive space for research, it’s where the future is being built.

“Relational wellbeing gives us a way to understand young people’s lives holistically, not as isolated problems to fix, but as systems of relationships—personal, social and environmental—that can either strengthen or undermine their wellbeing.”

Throughout the conference, participants explored what it means to “think, work and gather” relationally, and how to apply these ideas in practice. Sessions were led by senior academics and youth advisers, with contributions from the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) and other institutional partners.

Key outcomes of the event include stronger institutional collaboration; enhanced research capacity among teams; and the co-creation of a long-term plan for the u’GOOD community of practice. Researchers also refined a shared theory of change to guide future collaboration and reporting.

The final day closed with a clear message: youth research in the Global South is no longer being led from elsewhere; the momentum now rests firmly in African, Asian and Latin American hands.

“We are building something enduring—a network of researchers and young people who will keep asking hard questions, keep learning together and keep shaping knowledge that matters,” said Prof Swartz.