Knowledge

The second edition of Shared Development, the IFAD newsletter on SSTC, focuses on interventions at the regional and country levels that target climate adaptation and resilience.

The STARLIT (Strengthening Agricultural Resilience through Learning and Innovation) project is an IFAD-China SSTC Facility funded initiative which aims to strengthen the resilience of farmers in the maize value chain in Kenya and Rwanda.

This newsletter shares stories and solutions for agriculture and rural transformation, and builds a picture of how SSTC contributes to improving the livelihoods of rural people.

FAO, IFAD and WFP are leveraging South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) to support national Home-Grown School Feeding Programmes (HGSF).

This publication highlights some of the innovations in rural development promoted in Kenya, Tanzania and other African countries by IFAD and AGRA.

Brazil and Africa share similar environmental, climate and social conditions, and both face similar development challenges. This creates interesting opportunities for South-South collaboration through technology transfer in several areas, including agriculture, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and value chains development.

This paper is a contribution to the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) (UN, 1978), which gave birth to what is known today, in the UN system and beyond, as “South-South and Triangular Cooperation" (SSTC). 

The programme Strengthening Knowledge Sharing on Innovative Solutions Using Learning Route (LR) Methodology1 in Asia and the Pacific (ROUTASIA) is the second phase of a four-year IFAD-funded large grant to Procasur Corporation. 

In March 2018, IFAD and the Government of Pakistan organized a one-day seminar entitled “Preparing Rural Communities to Cope with Climate Change through South-South and Triangular Cooperation”.  

The Outreach Project was implemented in selected African countries (Gambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania) and aimed to improve the financia inclusion strategies of ongoing IFAD-funded operations by transferring and adapting innovative solutions, tools and methodologies previously tested in various countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region.

South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) is a key development instrument that can contribute to achieving the objectives of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It provides unprecedented opportunities for developing countries to leverage their own experience, knowledge and resources in support of social and economic transformation of their, and other, people.

South-South and triangular cooperation has an enormous potential role in agriculture and rural development in developing countries, both in unlocking diverse experiences and lessons and in providing solutions to pressing development challenges.

From the cases that follow, a number of common lessons emerge. First, it is important to create a space for interaction and cross-country learning. In the Scaling up Micro-Irrigation Systems project or with the household mentoring approach, for instance, workshops and ‘writeshops’ gathered people from diverse countries who could then share their own knowledge and experiences. In such spaces, participants could compare how a similar approach or technology required certain adaptations to better fit with local cultural, social and environmental contexts, offering important lessons for future scaling up.

Sometimes individual champions can make a difference. In Madagascar, the project design for a public/private partnership improved drastically when an IFAD consultant with similar experience in another country became involved. In this case, it was also an ‘unexpected outcome’, as the innovation came from a replacement for the regular consultant, who had broken his foot …. So even through small staff changes, knowledge of a complementary innovation from another country can have a big impact.

On 7 July 2015, IFAD’s Strategy and Knowledge Department convened a roundtable discussion entitled “Leveraging South-South and Triangular Cooperation to Achieve Results”. The event benefited from contributions made by more than 50 participants, including both IFAD stakeholders (management, staff and Member State representatives) and participants representing IFAD grantees, sister institutions and partners, including: the African Development Bank, CIRAD, Embrapa, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Poverty Reduction Center in China, PROCASUR, the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, the World Bank Group and the World Food Programme. The roundtable focused on four areas of discussion: (i) the evolving context – the ‘utility’, demand, supply, risks and opportunities – associated with delivering South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) activities; (ii) incorporating technical assistance exchanges, study tours, learning routes and similar activities into countries’ development strategies; (iii) using grant mechanisms to facilitate the transfer of development solutions through SSTC; (iv) developing knowledge hubs and other models. A number of observations, experiences and good practices were shared over the course of the day, and much of the richness of the discussion has been recorded in the following pages of this report. The most salient messages are presented in the Conclusions section and are summarized briefly below. 

South-South and triangular cooperation (SSTC) has become an integral part of IFAD’s support to ESA programmes. The transfer of effective approaches and technologies enables countries of the South to join forces in meeting their aims of reducing rural poverty and ensuring food security. By using experts from other countries in project design, for instance, or setting up learning and sharing opportunities in the region, IFAD has helped foster such exchanges.