What we do
The Task Team on South-South Cooperation is aimed at exploring the synergies between South-South cooperation (SSC) and the aid effectiveness agenda through the triple mandate of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA):
1. Enriching the aid effectiveness agenda with the practices of SSC;
2. Adapting the aid effectiveness principles to SSC; and
3. Ensuring synergies between SSC and North-South cooperation.
Work streams
Analytical Work
The TT-SSC, supported by a large network of Southern academic institutions, identifies and documents good practices on SSC in the context of aid effectiveness, to inform the policy-making process and to generate clear-cut policy recommendations.
How is the analytical work done?
Community of Practice
In order to strengthen the link between policy and practice, the TT-SSC works to consolidate the largest online network of practitioners on South-South Knowledge Exchange (www.southsouth.info), and to effectively integrate it to the debate, the analytical work and, ultimately, to the decision-making process. By doing so, the TT-SSC seeks to strengthen the southern voices in the aid effectiveness context.
Take me to the Community of Practice
Advocacy and Outreach
The TT-SSC also engages in practice-based policy outreach on South-South Cooperation and South-South Knowledge Exchange, through communication, coordination of events and partnerships with other Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) clusters, regional and global SSC platforms, champions and actors involved in SSC and aid effectiveness, in particular towards the Korea HLF.
The G20 mandate for UNDP and the TT-SSC
In November 2010, G20 leaders gathered in Seoul for their Fifth Summit. One of the main outcomes of the meeting was the Seoul Development Consensus, Multi Year Action Plan on development.
In its multi-year development action plan, the G20 recognizes the value of sharing knowledge as it “contributes to the adoption and adaptation of the most relevant and effective development solutions”. In order to “enhance the effectiveness and reach of knowledge sharing”, the G20 “request[s] the Task Team on South-South Cooperation (TT-SSC) and UNDP to recommend how knowledge sharing activity, including North-South, South-South, and triangular cooperation, can be scaled up. These recommendations should include measures to broaden knowledge sources, improve brokering functions, strengthen the dissemination of best practices and expand funding options (June 2011).”
In other words, the TT-SSC and UNDP were requested to provide recommendations on how knowledge sharing can be scaled up, taking full advantage of existing initiatives and platforms and their potential to become, through enhanced partnerships, an effective tool for development at all levels: North-South, South-South and triangular. Conscious of the transformative potential of horizontal partnerships and peer learning as a tool to promote global development, G20 countries agreed to mainstream knowledge sharing initiatives across its Development Consensus pillars and ask multilateral institutions to support this objective.
This is a recognition of the intense work on policy and practice led by the international community, including the TT-SSC and UNDP, over the last years in the area of South-South and triangular cooperation, reflected among others in the 2009 Nairobi Declaration and the 2010 Bogotá Statement. The G20 leaders also acknowledged that connecting practitioners and change-makers might help transform the development cooperation agenda in a multi-polar world, where development solutions and models are available globally.