Connecting disciplines in a North-South collaboration has many advantages: mutualisms evolve, synergies are created and spin-offs emerge. The BIOTA South (Biodiversity Monitoring Transect Analysis in southern Africa) programme, with its long-term vision to generate knowledge of biodiversity along a north-south transect in southern Africa, is providing opportunities for research, technology transfer and capacity building while focusing on potential solutions for critical challenges that face this environmentally vulnerable part of the subcontinent.