**9. A healthier future for malaria surveillance data collection, ownership and utilization**

Global inequities of capacity and opportunity are a difficult but massively important issue to discuss [81]. We have no wish to offend any of our colleagues based at prestigious institutes in wealthier, cooler, malaria-free countries, nor do we suggest that the capacities they bring to the table are anything less than invaluable. However, the existing *status quo* is neither effective nor fair, and will persist until it is deliberately addressed with far more south-centred funding schemes and productive data sharing mechanisms (**Figure 9**). The time has come for the systematic redistribution of funding investment, to unambiguously prioritize locally-owned and governed institutions in the low-income countries struggling with malaria on an ongoing basis.

And data governance structures that incentivize productive *south–south* and *south–north* (as distinct from *north–south*) collaborations are equally important. For many surveillance staff, investigators and institutions in developing countries, ownership of their data and the analytical opportunities it provides constitute their most important means leverage when negotiating fair conditions in collaborations through which they can develop their data handling and analytical capacities. South-centred platforms for archiving and sharing data, that empower data collectors and incentivize development-friendly collaborations with expert partners from high-income countries, are urgently needed. Looking beyond entomological surveillance, invaluable lessons may be learned from the encouraging experiences of regional and global networks for monitoring anti-malarial drug resistance [82].

The funding and data sharing policies that have shaped the global capacity distribution illustrated in **Figure 7** need to be progressively and aggressively reformed. Vocal advocacy for such strategic changes are a job for everyone in the malaria surveillance community. Each of us are, in our own way, responsible for the landscape as it stands today, and have no-one to blame but ourselves if such inequities and inefficiencies are allowed to persist. Unless we all play our part in actively finding solutions, we must accept that we are passively perpetuating the problem.
