A New Mechanism for South-South Knowledge

In my previous blog entry, I mentioned the expected growing engagement between Brazil and Sub-Saharan African countries in 2012, to exchange knowledge and further economic and social development.

During the past five years, Brazil’s contributions to technical cooperation and to international organizations more than doubled, from US$158 million in 2005 to US$362 million in 2009. According to recent data, the total contribution for 2010 should be about US$400 million. Since Brazil uses its own criteria and technical cooperation approaches, it cannot be compaired with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. In fact, the country does not want to be seen as another donor from the west, and therefore does not impose conditions to provide technical cooperation.

New models of cooperation with African countries have emerged over the past five years, and at the center of this technical partnership is the implementation of “structuring projects." The goal of these projects is to be transformational with a strong component of knowledge transfer and long term engagement. 

Recently,  a decentralized approach of engagement was announced by the Brazil government. The “decentralized South-South development cooperation” mechanism aims at promoting the engagement of local governments in transferring technologies and sharing successful experiences with peers in Africa.

This initiative will help to establish a closer dialogue among practitioners at municipal level  in areas such as health, education,  sustainable agriculture, education, global governance, food security, sports, local development, conservation of cultural heritage, scientific development and innovation, climate change and protection of the environment, vocational training and development of local capacity for attaining the Millennium Development Goals. Partnerships with civil society and private sector are encouraged by this approach, which will allow for greater harmonization among different stakeholders and at the same time open up possibilities for the development of private sector partnerships between African and Brazilian firms.