The International Partner as Invited Guest: Beyond Colonial and Import–Export Models of Medical Education

The dominant model of international collaboration in medical education, both currently and in the past two centuries, is one of foreign (i.e., Euro-American) ownership and control. In this Invited Commentary, the authors provide a brief selected history of such international partnerships. They then focus on recent partnership models that have alternative structures. One of these is the collaborative partnership between Addis Ababa University (AAU) and the University of Toronto. This partnership is known as the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC). From the inception of this partnership, the TAAAC has aimed to be relational and has firmly placed ownership of the codeveloped curriculum at AAU. Other explicit aims of the TAAAC are to help AAU develop culturally appropriate programming that is sustainable with local resources and to develop capacity-building, coteaching models. In seeking potential precedents to the TAAAC, the authors have explored archives in Ethiopia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They found that invited foreign guests have played a role in the development of educational systems in Ethiopia since the 1940s. The authors believe that by paying close attention to the language used to describe the nature of a relationship, medical educators may be able to move toward more collaborative, capacity-building international partnerships.