The China-IFAD South-South and Triangular Cooperation Facility was established in 2018, with a contribution of US$10 million in supplementary funds from the People's Republic of China. As the first Facility in IFAD dedicated to SSTC, the Facility finances SSTC projects and programmes to complement IFAD's SSTC agenda by increasing the volume of South-South exchanges, spurring innovation, and promoting investments in rural areas and in rural people.    

Mobilising knowledge, technologies and resources

The Facility is an integral part of IFAD’s holistic business model to promote sustainable and inclusive rural transformation, and with specific attention to poverty reduction, fighting malnutrition and promoting rural youth employment in developing countries. The Facility pursues the overarching objective of mobilizing knowledge, technologies and resources from the Global South to accelerate rural poverty alleviation, enhance rural productivity, and advance rural transformation. 

Strategic priorities

• Promote innovations in strengthening the productive, managerial, financial and marketing capacities of rural people
• Pilot inclusive production and business models which generate higher incomes for rural people in agricultural and non-agricultural rural activities
• Promote investments and trade between developing countries that provide services or markets to rural people.

Priority areas for 2020 – 2021

• Strengthening the capacities of farmers and their organizations to enhance resilience against disasters, including establishing fast-maturing alternative agricultural and rural enterprises, maintaining and producing sufficient and high quality yields.
• Facilitating access to markets in conditions of specific barriers in a given context, including facilitating safe and hygienic transport, and working to ensure markets remain open and that demand remains high.
• Delivering up-to-date agriculture-related information to smallholder producers on production, weather, market prices and other important areas in rural areas through digital services.
• Building trade capacities through provision of technologies and services that enable smallholder producers to meet quality and sanitary standards of overseas markets.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is taking a considerable toll on the livelihoods and food security of rural people. The Facility will now contribute to IFAD’s global response to COVID-19 by designating its remaining funds to support national governments to build back better, more resilient societies.

Type of activities financed

The Facility supports activities and schemes that share, apply and adapt development solutions to similar country contexts, incubate technology innovation and transfer, bridge business-to-business linkage and private-public partnerships, and catalyse South-South trade and investments.

Processes of proposal preparation and project implementation

The Facility places a high priority on national ownership and operates in a demand driven approach. Project proposals are to emerge from the dialogue with national governments or local counterparts. Important concerns in the design of projects include focus on poor rural people, development of local capacity, and build-in project sustainability.

Projects are to be executed by the recipient organizations, through partnerships with national governments or local institutions and with support of IFAD divisions, following IFAD's standard policies, procedures and guidelines on consultancy services, procurement, financial management and reporting.

Current portfolio of projects under the Facility

The Facility has concluded two calls for proposals. In the first call, eight projects for a total amount of US$3.6 million were approved, whilst the second call saw the approval of seven projects for a total amount of US$3.1 million. These projects cover all the regions in which IFAD operates, and are implemented by recipients from government bodies, private companies, UN agencies, research institutions and NGOs. The projects deploy South-South cooperation as an important instrument to promote rural transformation and enhance food security, over a broad range of thematic areas, such as value chain enhancement, aquaculture productivity improvement, climate-smart business model, rural employment for youth, nutrition improvement, rural investment promotion, etc.

More details can be found here:

• Approved proposals - first call
• Approved proposals - second call