Between technology transfer and South–South collaboration: an Indo-Cuban experiment in biopharmaceutical innovation

Abstract The collaboration between the Cuban Centre of Molecular Immunology (CIM) and the Indian firm Biocon challenges conventional understandings of technology transfer. Initiated in 2003, the joint venture was a unique experiment in South–South biopharmaceutical collaboration. It brought into relation two distinct innovation regimes: Cuba’s public health–oriented model, closely tied to the state and its medical diplomacy, and India’s market-driven biopharmaceutical industry. However, both regimes were animated by postcolonial aspirations for technoscientific emergence in the Global South. The partnership ultimately dissolved, as structural tensions and divergent industrial objectives proved difficult to reconcile. But its apparent failure was also productive. For CIM, it opened access to resources lacking in Cuba and enabled clinical trials on a wider population. For Biocon, it offered research, development, and manufacturing expertise that supported its rise in the global biosimilar market. Drawing on interviews with key actors in Cuba and India, this study situates the partnership within broader debates on innovation regimes, postcolonial science, and the inequalities that shape the global biopharmaceutical economy. The article shows how South–South collaborations, even when framed as alternatives to asymmetric North–South models, remain entangled in (bio)capitalist logics while still opening possibilities for reimagining technological exchange beyond dominant North/South narratives.