Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Adriana Erthal Abdenur on November 17, 2011 at 4:11pm

 

Thanks for starting the discussion, Nils.  Here in Brazil, we observe that there is indeed a multitude of new players, both in the production of knowledge in the South and in the facilitation of knowledge exchange.  At the micro-level, universities, NGOs, government agencies (especially at the sub-national level) and public sector coalitions seem to be building up their own networks of cooperation. At the university where I am a professor, for instance (PUC-Rio), research collaboration ties with universities in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in Latin America have mushroomed over the past decade.

We also see many delegations coming to Rio to learn about our city's experiences -- both positive and negative -- with favela policy (pacification and urban integration).  Our "island of competence" institutions, such as FIOCRUZ, have established their own cooperation initiatives; I was recently at a FIOCRUZ event about the public health and medical education drives it runs in Mozambique and Angola.  At the national level, there seems to be a proliferation of platforms for facilitating these exchanges. For instance, the IBSA and BRICS forums try to complement broader North-based initiatives with direct collaboration ties. 

Nonetheless, I see three key problems here. The first is a lot of fragmentation in this process: much of the knowledge being generated here is not tapped into for lack of enabling institutions that can transfer, adapt, and scale up initiatives. This may be related to the second issue: the lack of coherent, long-term policies to foster this mode of knowledge exchange.  To cite a small but telling example, any cooperation programs we have in Africa suffer from the massive red tape required to transfer funds to projects abroad. Fiocruz sends graduate students over to Mozambique and Angola to work on research projects, and they are more or less powerful to do anything if there is an emergency with personnel abroad, all because of inflexible accounting rules.

The third problem I see is the old issue of "cookie-cutter" approach to development problems.  Yes, cash transfer programs here in Brazil have helped us to improve some of our Millennium Development Goals indicators, but they should not be blindly replicated without attention to the variation in outcomes and the (economic, social) sustainability of the project over the long haul. Simply transposing cooperation from the traditional North-South model to a South-South axis will not do away with the challenges of adaptation, scaling up, and contextualization.

That's my two cents from Brazil-- or better yet, my dois centavos.  Looking forward to hearing others' perspectives.

Permalink Reply by Han Fraeters on November 18, 2011 at 11:10am

Very interesting note, Adriana. Will the discussion about the "Who?" in South-South Knowledge Exchange revolve increasingly around dedicated institutions? Do you think that there is an agenda ahead of us to "institutionalize" knowledge exchange at the country level, the regional, the local level, etc? In the World Bank we are seeing more and more that countries are requesting support to develop their institutions for South-South Knowledge Exchange. That might be an answer to the fragmentation question. The question then becomes what those institutions need to look like.

Permalink Reply by Adriana Erthal Abdenur on November 20, 2011 at 8:52am

Thank you, Hans.  I think there is certainly room and perhaps a growing need for mediating institutions such as the World Bank to play a larger role in S-S exchanges. Though, to be frank – at least here in Brazil, many of the more interesting initiatives seem to be happening at local levels, not necessarily through the formal cooperation agencies.  By focusing too narrowly on government-sanctioned or -initiated programs, there’s the risk of overlooking those atomized sources of innovation – all of which suffer from excessively rigid rules and laws regulating cross-border cooperation, but some of which have been very ingenious in finding ways to get things done abroad. So there is some value in the fragmentation. Smaller institutions, agencies, NGOs are often more agile and creative in finding loopholes (in the positive sense) to carry our programs abroad. Here in Rio we have a world-class mathematics research institute, IMPA, that has a very strong network of international collaborators, partly thanks to the agility of the past few directors.

 

Another small but close-by example: at the think tank I coordinate, the BRICS Policy Center, we have a visiting fellows program to bring experts in development and international relations from the other BRICS countries to work on topics related to urban development, health policy, security systems, and other themes, but we have to navigate a labyrinth of red tape to get visas for the visitors.  Our first fellows just arrived from South Africa (a legal scholar) and we are expecting fellows from China, Russia and India in the next few months. The logistical and administrative barriers, however minute they may seem, delay and complicate their arrival and limit their stay here in Brazil.  

 

Coming back to the role of the WB: you can build a very solid bridge, but if there are barriers along both banks, nobody will cross the river.

 

So, in my opinion, the biggest challenge is not one of financing or even knowledge production, but rather one of institutional reform: getting Southern donors (and recipients, to an extent) to flexibilize the rules – fiscal, administrative, legal, etc) that create so many obstacles for S-S cooperation.  Perhaps the WB could help with those institutional frameworks.  The Bank has enormous experience and knowledge of the legal frameworks that facilitate cross-border flows of experts, financing, materials, etc., and perhaps part of the bridging work could involve helping to break down those barriers.

 

Part of the difficulty is political.  The constituencies in our countries don’t necessarily view South-South cooperation as an imperative—or better yet, many people, including politicians, view the lending of any assistance (even if couched as horizontal cooperation) as unjustifiable given our challenges at home.  To paraphrase acquaintances in Brasilia: why should we help Angola if we haven’t figured out our own problems? (Never mind that we might benefit from cooperating with Angola in tackling our own problems—in public health initiatives that certainly is true).

 

Finally, we can’t avoid the big white elephant in the room.  As long as the key international organizations resist reform in the direction of making their decision-making strutures more representative of the international scene, granting a greater role at the very heart of these organizations to developing countries, there will be skepticism about both the intentions and capacity of those institutions to help disseminate knowledge about development.  Of course, that’s part of a broader debate, but I don’t think it can be avoided when the topic is the Who in S-S cooperation.

Permalink Reply by Enrique Maruri on November 22, 2011 at 3:46pm

Many thanks to all for their contributions to this very interesting discussion. Very relevant for the future of the South-South Cooperation agenda, particularly at this moment, when we are few days ahead of the Busan HLF4, where South-South and Triangular Cooperation will play a prominent role.

 

From my experience, better South-South Cooperation requires both: on one hand more global and regional connectors and facilitators, on the other more and better initiatives to strengthen institutional capacities at country and local levels to share and adapt development experiences. Theses are two key areas of work that complement each other, and none of them is more challenging or important than other. Let me illustrate this point with one example:

 

Since 2008, Colombia engaged in a South-South Cooperation initiative with Caribbean countries (25 in total) in the framework of The Caribbean Strategy. The implementation of this initiative has demonstrated the enormous contribution of knowledge sharing as it helps countries to shape regional agendas and strengthen integration and political ties while addressing common developing challenges.

 

Since then more than 800 practitioners from 25 Caribbean countries have benefitted from projects on 5 areas of work defined jointly. The amounts invested by the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Acción Social –today transformed into the Colombian Agency for International Cooperation APC- during the first three years of implementation amounted 3 million dollars. A good investment, if taken into account the yields in terms of institutional collaboration, political bilateral relations and the number of technical exchange and learning activities that have taken place.

 

It has served also as a seed capital that attracted other Colombian institutions interested in participating in exchanges with their peers in The Caribbean. Their engagement has boosted the development of internal capacities for knowledge sharing in all partner institutions that do not come exclusively from the national government, but from the academia and private sector as well. Today, more than 12 Colombian institutions are involved in a wide array of exchange activities promoted by The Caribbean Strategy.

 

The Caribbean Strategy has also promoted the use of innovate tools. In the web portal (www.caribbeanstrategy.gov.co), the initiative offers a virtual space where hundreds of technicians, professional and students from each country of the Caribbean can explore and exchange best practices, documents and information.    

 

The impact of the Strategy has been transformative. Its positive results have contributed to position South-South cooperation as a policy priority highlighted in the 2010-2014 National Development Plan. Besides, it has inspired the launch of similar programs with Mesoamerican countries, in areas such as public services, local tourism and public security.

 

However, this initiative still faces many challenges and limitations. First, the lack of adequate monitoring and evaluation framework, particularly to assess the capacities developed through the proposed training and exchanges activities. Here, as the World Bank Institute suggests, Colombia could benefit from exchanges with peers that have already developed such frameworks. The Global Development Learning Network, supported by the WBI, for instance, could facilitate more interaction between the Colombia institutions and their Caribbean peers, reducing costs of monitoring and evaluation in a region where flight connections are limited and travel costs expensive.

 

The program also requires investing more to strengthen the capacity of the public and private institutions involved which have been traditionally designed and are prepared to provide services to respond to the “internal demand”. The growing number of external requests for cooperation, like the one generated by the Caribbean Strategy, makes it necessary to look for additional resources, operational capacities and infrastructure that are not always in place. Sometimes, participating in these of type of activities can even demand institutional reforms, since some of the involved institutions don’t have the mandate to spend resources abroad or do not have experience with international cooperation.

 

Let me add one more element that, from my perspective, is of crucial importance for the effectiveness of South-South and Triangular Exchanges: the issue of leadership. We can develop perfect institutional frameworks and have perfect facilitation mechanisms at global level, but if South-south partners don’t identify, promote and sustain leaderships their initiatives are in permanent risk of loosing momentum. Champions are the engines of successful transformations and a guarantee for their sustainability. In that sense, a lot more is needed to identify them and support their work. This brings up one thought-provoking idea for this discussion: can the investing in leaders and their networks produce faster results in the short run than developing institutions?

 

 

Permalink Reply by Han Fraeters on November 24, 2011 at 3:28pm

Interesting comments, Adriana.

 

You are right to say that the governing structures of the IFIs affect the legitimacy of those organizations to engage in the South-South agenda. This is something that needs to be solved at the political level, by all countries. If countreis - rich, poor and in-between, find it sufficiently important to change it, they will resolve it. If they don't, this lack of legitimacy will persist.

 

I very much agree with you that some of the most interesting and useful initiatives are at the local or regional level and/or don't involve government. I firmly believe that it would be a mistake to think that we now need centralized governmental institutions to scale up or regulate SSC and SSKE. What can be done at the national level, is to create buy-in and understanding at the policital level, to create an enabling environment, i.e. to help countries turn their attention to this agenda and to help them engage.

Adriana Erthal Abdenur said:

Thank you, Hans.  I think there is certainly room and perhaps a growing need for mediating institutions such as the World Bank to play a larger role in S-S exchanges. Though, to be frank – at least here in Brazil, many of the more interesting initiatives seem to be happening at local levels, not necessarily through the formal cooperation agencies.  By focusing too narrowly on government-sanctioned or -initiated programs, there’s the risk of overlooking those atomized sources of innovation – all of which suffer from excessively rigid rules and laws regulating cross-border cooperation, but some of which have been very ingenious in finding ways to get things done abroad. So there is some value in the fragmentation. Smaller institutions, agencies, NGOs are often more agile and creative in finding loopholes (in the positive sense) to carry our programs abroad. Here in Rio we have a world-class mathematics research institute, IMPA, that has a very strong network of international collaborators, partly thanks to the agility of the past few directors.

 

Another small but close-by example: at the think tank I coordinate, the BRICS Policy Center, we have a visiting fellows program to bring experts in development and international relations from the other BRICS countries to work on topics related to urban development, health policy, security systems, and other themes, but we have to navigate a labyrinth of red tape to get visas for the visitors.  Our first fellows just arrived from South Africa (a legal scholar) and we are expecting fellows from China, Russia and India in the next few months. The logistical and administrative barriers, however minute they may seem, delay and complicate their arrival and limit their stay here in Brazil.  

 

Coming back to the role of the WB: you can build a very solid bridge, but if there are barriers along both banks, nobody will cross the river.

 

So, in my opinion, the biggest challenge is not one of financing or even knowledge production, but rather one of institutional reform: getting Southern donors (and recipients, to an extent) to flexibilize the rules – fiscal, administrative, legal, etc) that create so many obstacles for S-S cooperation.  Perhaps the WB could help with those institutional frameworks.  The Bank has enormous experience and knowledge of the legal frameworks that facilitate cross-border flows of experts, financing, materials, etc., and perhaps part of the bridging work could involve helping to break down those barriers.

 

Part of the difficulty is political.  The constituencies in our countries don’t necessarily view South-South cooperation as an imperative—or better yet, many people, including politicians, view the lending of any assistance (even if couched as horizontal cooperation) as unjustifiable given our challenges at home.  To paraphrase acquaintances in Brasilia: why should we help Angola if we haven’t figured out our own problems? (Never mind that we might benefit from cooperating with Angola in tackling our own problems—in public health initiatives that certainly is true).

 

Finally, we can’t avoid the big white elephant in the room.  As long as the key international organizations resist reform in the direction of making their decision-making strutures more representative of the international scene, granting a greater role at the very heart of these organizations to developing countries, there will be skepticism about both the intentions and capacity of those institutions to help disseminate knowledge about development.  Of course, that’s part of a broader debate, but I don’t think it can be avoided when the topic is the Who in S-S cooperation.

Permalink Reply by Adriana Erthal Abdenur on December 20, 2011 at 9:11am

Hans, regarding this point: "What can be done at the national level, is to create buy-in and understanding at the political level, to create an enabling environment, i.e. to help countries turn their attention to this agenda and to help them engage.":

Part of the strategy might include creating greater awareness of sucessful cases. There is so much skepticism of South-South cooperation that those cases are seldom made visible-- or, when they are, it's not done in an explicitly South-South framework. Which triggers a vicious feedback loop: little visibility --> little funding/institutional support --> few results.

Or else, it's overdone, with South-South cooperation being presented as a panacea and neutral substitute for North-South relations (neither of which it is-- panacea, politically non-asymmetrical).

Do you know of countries where South-South cooperation projects do acquire visibility?