Using the method of medical biography, this article challenges some of the more treasured decolonial viewpoints on knowledge production in and from the global South. The biography in question concerns one of the leading cardiovascular scientists in the world with roots in South Africa, but whose breakthrough studies in medicine significantly altered global understandings of the relationship between poverty and heart disease. In composing the biography, the findings point to the influence of African "agency" in global medical science research, the power of global North/South research "partnerships" in a multipolar world and refute the notion that inequalities of resources mean inequalities in knowledge production on the part of medical (and indeed social) scientists in Africa.