A dedicated ministerial platform: The logical next step in South-South Cooperation?

Angola’s foreign minister, Tete António, bumps elbows with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, at a China-Africa conference in Dakar, Senegal in 2021. SSC includes partnerships between these two countries in infrastructure development. Photo: Reuters

On 25 February 2023, AK Abdul Momen, Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, proposed to create a Ministerial Forum by the Ministries of Southern Countries. He said, "Time has come to create a forum which would include the foreign, finance or development ministries of the countries of the global south. The ministers would get together on a regular basis to discuss important issues, examine potentials, investigate opportunities and challenges, outline viable options, and share lessons gained on common objectives and concerns". 

South-South Cooperation (SSC), founded in 2008, is the exchange of experience, technology, and resources among countries in the Global South. It is based on the notion that developing countries in the South can help one another instead of relying on the North. SSC can connect two or more developing countries to form an arrangement that could be bilateral, regional, intraregional, or international. This cooperation aims to promote collaboration and partnership to achieve strategic goals like the SDG. Moreover, it includes initiatives for political dialogue, cultural exchanges, and investment among countries in the South.

In recent years, SSC has emerged as an essential strategy for developing nations to tackle global issues, including poverty, food shortages, environmental degradation, climate change, and the stagnation of economic growth. The United Nations has been a driving force for South-South cooperation. Many countries in the Global South had already established institutions and organisations to support these efforts.

Its importance has been recognised in important multilateral agreements, such as the ground-breaking Program of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the recent Second United Nations High-Level Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40). These two international gatherings have indeed been credited with demonstrating their meaningfulness.

In particular, more than half of global growth has come mostly from the global south. But intra-South trade has never been so high. South-South Corporation accounts for a little more than one-third of all world trade. Southern countries still lack diversified supply chain mechanisms with the participation of many other developing countries. 

SSC includes partnerships between India and Kenya in the technology sector, China and Angola in infrastructure development, and Brazil and Mozambique in agricultural development. At the same time, Uganda is trying to become more resilient and improve its farmers' livelihoods by taking help from China. 

Countries in the global south should now come together to make a ministerial forum as a place to talk about development goals and interests on a global scale. This could help make sure that member countries' ideas and needs are heard and taken into account in discussions and decisions about global development.

There are several components which reveal the importance of South-South cooperation.

The first part is coordination. A ministerial forum could give member countries a place to talk about development programs and policies together. This could help avoid needless repetition and ensure that development strategies work together and help each other.

Again, a forum of ministers could help develop policies and plans that meet the needs of each member country. As a result, policies are more likely to be successful and suitable for the context in which they should be implemented.

A ministerial forum may give member nations the opportunity to exchange knowledge and viewpoints on development problems, particularly successes and lessons learned. These opportunities can be helpful to every party involved. Increased sharing of ideas and knowledge amongst signatory countries might benefit greatly.

A forum for ministries could also help make it easier for member countries and foreign partners to work together. Pooling resources and knowledge may promote advanced shared development objectives.

Whether or not a South-South ministerial forum is successful depends on whether or not the countries that make up the forum have the political will to work together to reach common development goals. SSC may be strengthened by strong political commitment, which can boost the probability that parties will be willing to discuss and implement policy reforms. It could be fostered through contractual procedures, memorandums of understanding, and other legal frameworks that lay the groundwork for member countries to cooperate.

Moreover, maintaining a South-South ministerial forum requires sufficient funding and personnel. There is a possibility that member nations may be required to contribute resources in order for cooperative efforts and operations, such as research projects or programs designed to boost capacity, to be successful.

The South-South ministerial forum could serve as an efficient information management and exchange mechanism. In order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience amongst the participating nations, it may be useful to establish channels and platforms for the dissemination of examples of good practice, lessons learned, and other relevant information.

Monitoring and evaluation are essential when it comes to analysing the success of SSC initiatives and ensuring they're producing the desired outcomes. Frameworks for monitoring and evaluation should be developed together with member countries to maximise their effectiveness.

In general, the success of a South-South ministerial forum depends upon the willingness of member countries to communicate and cooperate together, along with the formation of institutional frameworks, explicit goals and priorities, enough resources, information sharing and access, evaluation and monitoring mechanisms. A new platform will thus enable ministers to better coordinate and develop policies, share information, forge partnerships, and advocate on development issues. This may assist member countries' development projects and the outcomes they produce to become successful and productive. 

Consequently, for Bangladesh, forming a ministerial forum under the auspices of the South-South Corporation is crucial because of the benefits it may provide in terms of economic aid, access to new marketplaces, multilateralism, capacity building, and diplomatic opportunities.

With trade partnerships with other developing countries, Bangladesh may be able to sell more than just goods to developed countries and become less dependent on them. Bangladesh, South Asia's fastest-growing economy, is well on its track to graduating from the Least Developed Countries and is attracting investors from developing countries, which has made the idea of forming a ministerial forum between the global south for mutual connection something to ponder upon.

Illustration: TBS

Sauid Ahmed Khan is a freelance Contributor and a Graduate of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Dhaka.