This chapter explores the environs of a major medical research center in Africa. The center is owned by the National Clinical Research Organisation (itself explicitly called a para-statal institution) and has, for the past three decades, conducted world-leading research in tropical diseases in collaboration mainly with a one major northern government health agency. While both institutions are linked to their respective states, the result is not simply national government science (as part of a developmental nation state), but a transnational partnership. The chapter discern, in this center traces of multiple pasts that shape the present landscape of medical research. Pasts...