Should South-South cooperation be part of the “new global partnership for effective development cooperation? And how do emerging economies create cooperation agencies to  receive and provide official development assistance? 

A thematic session on South-South and triangular cooperation was held at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness this afternoon. The main challenges of this form of cooperation –which is not new but has been renovated and increased in the past years – were presented.

Rogelio Granguillhome, Executive Director of the Mexican brand-new Agency for International Development, shared the difficulties faced in securing sufficient finance. He also mentioned the risk of thematic dispersion and of proliferating short-term actions. Finally, he highlighted the need to find evaluation and transparency mechanisms. Marco Farani, Director of the Brazilian Agency for Cooperation, Ministry of External Relations, reminded us that South-South cooperation is based on a community of realities and problems in developing countries. He also pointed to the need for emerging countries to create cooperation agencies that will allow them to both receive and provide official development assistance.

From a Kenyan perspective, Enos Oyaya, Director of the Quality Assurance and Standards Directorate, Ministry of Education, insisted in the need to “decolonise” African minds. According to him, if political systems and economies were successfully decolonized, African states and societies still have struggle to overcome the idea that “what comes from the North is better than South-South”. This type of cooperation must focus on capacity-building, clearly identifying partners and institutionalizing best practices.

Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President of the World Bank Institute, linked the revival of South-South cooperation to the shift in global powers, and underlined that a session focused on this issue would not have taken place at an international conference ten or even five years ago. In this perspective, he raised the issue of the role of multilateral organisations in relation to the rise of South-South cooperation. He suggested the World Bank play a role of broker between countries who want to learn and those who want to share. He outlined two further potential contributions of the Bank: fostering South-South cooperation in the development strategies of the Bank’s clients, and to establishing and financing multi-partner exchanges, dialogues and transfers.

Jonathan Glennie (Overseas Development Institute) offered some concluding remarks. For him, South-South cooperation requires a change in mindset and a broader partnership than just government-to-government. He raised the question whether South-South cooperation is and should be part of the “new global partnership for effective development cooperation” that will emerge in Busan, and recalled that this issue is debated and controversial within the aid community. He finally questioned the nature of South-South cooperation, and stated that its financial component should not be under-estimated and hidden by the knowledge-sharing aspect.

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