This report was commissioned by the British Academy's Africa Panel to examine the challenges facing African universities when undertaking collaborative research with UK and other international partners, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. It draws principally on a consultation undertaken by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) between February and March 2007, which invited African academics and staff development and research support managers to offer their views on North-South collaboration, and to explain the challenges, constraints and future priorities of such research partnerships. The consultation targeted particularly, but not exclusively, those involved in social science and humanities research. From the beginning it did not set out to offer definitive conclusions, but rather to gather the thoughts of colleagues in African universities, to make some suggestions to UK and other funding agencies, and to serve as an agenda for further discussion. Findings are based on the responses of 90 academics and 62 members of university management and support staff in 72 African higher education institutions from 14 sub-Saharan countries. Based on these responses, and the conclusions drawn from these, the author makes the following observations and suggestions to the British Academy, UK universities and to other agencies involved in the UK research community: (1) Better understandings of African university environments, cultures and processes are needed to enable and facilitate research; (2) Collaboration between donors would increase the overall impact of UK funding; (3) Developing individual staff is important; and (4) Disseminating knowledge is imperative. Section 7 discusses these suggestions in greater detail and for each it highlights a number of issues which would benefit from further consideration, in order that they might be shaped into a practical response. Appendices include: (1) Survey responses by institution; and (2) Selected references. (Contains 11 figures and 29 footnotes.) [This report was prepared for The British Academy.]