South–South cooperation
Based on Wikipedia: South–South cooperation
In 1955, representatives from twenty-nine nations gathered in the Indonesian city of Bandung for what President Sukarno called "the first intercontinental conference of coloured peoples in the history of mankind." For the first time, these countries were meeting not as colonies of distant European powers, but as independent nations. Sukarno captured the moment perfectly: "Now we are free, sovereign, and independent. We are again masters in our own house. We do not need to go to other continents to confer."
That conference planted a seed that would grow into something remarkable: a global movement of developing nations helping each other rise, without waiting for permission or assistance from their former colonizers.
The Idea of the "Global South"
The term "Global South" doesn't actually refer to geography. Australia sits in the southern hemisphere, but nobody considers it part of the Global South. Argentina is further south than most African nations, yet fits the category while they do too.
Instead, the term captures a shared historical experience. Countries in the Global South tend to share political, social, and economic histories rooted in colonialism and its aftermath. They experienced the extraction of their resources, the disruption of their societies, and the imposition of foreign political systems. When colonialism formally ended, these nations often found themselves economically dependent on their former rulers, locked into trade relationships that perpetuated inequality.
The opposite of the Global South is the Global North—not a geographic designation either, but shorthand for the wealthy industrialized nations that dominated the colonial era. The United States, Western Europe, Japan. These countries control most international institutions, from the United Nations Security Council to the International Monetary Fund.
South–South cooperation emerged as a direct challenge to this arrangement. Rather than waiting for aid from Northern countries—aid that often came with strings attached—nations of the Global South began asking: what if we helped each other?
Bandung and Its Aftermath
The Bandung Conference brought together a remarkable collection of nations. Burma, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, Indonesia, and Pakistan served as sponsors. The attendees included countries as diverse as Japan and Ethiopia, China and Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Libya.
They didn't agree on everything. Some were aligned with the United States in the emerging Cold War, others leaned toward the Soviet Union, and many wanted nothing to do with either superpower. But they shared a common conviction: the era of European domination had to end, and the newly independent nations needed to chart their own course.
The conference endorsed continuing decolonization efforts across Africa and Asia. More fundamentally, it established the principle that developing nations could work together on their own terms, without the mediation of Western powers.
Twenty-three years later, in 1978, the United Nations formally recognized this movement by establishing the Unit for South–South Cooperation. But the bureaucratic apparatus moved slowly. The real impact of South–South cooperation wouldn't be felt until the late 1990s, when the economic rise of several developing nations created new possibilities.
The Principles of Partnership
South–South cooperation operates on principles that deliberately contrast with traditional foreign aid from wealthy nations. The framework emphasizes mutual respect for state sovereignty—no country is positioned as superior to another. Partners are considered equals, regardless of their economic size.
Benefits from cooperation are meant to be distributed evenly. This differs sharply from traditional aid, where the donor country often extracts concessions in return for assistance.
Perhaps most significantly, South–South cooperation explicitly rejects conditionality. When the International Monetary Fund lends money, it typically demands "structural adjustments"—requirements that borrowing countries privatize state enterprises, cut social spending, and open their markets to foreign investment. These conditions have been enormously controversial, with critics arguing they benefit wealthy nations and corporations more than the people they're supposedly helping.
South–South cooperation says: we won't do that. We'll work together without trying to reshape each other's internal policies.
From Summits to Action
The Africa–South America cooperation initiative shows how these principles translate into practice. The first summit convened in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2006, bringing together fifty-three African delegates and twelve from South America. By the second summit in Venezuela in 2009, forty-nine African heads of state attended alongside twelve South American leaders.
The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez saw this cooperation as nothing less than "the beginning of the salvation of our people." Leaders from both continents hoped to create a new world order that would counter Western dominance—socially, economically, and politically.
Concrete agreements followed. Venezuela signed an oil deal with South Africa and a memorandum of understanding with Sierra Leone to form a joint mining company. The potential is enormous: together, Africa and South America hold more than a quarter of the world's energy resources, including oil and natural gas reserves scattered from Bolivia to Algeria to Angola.
Brazil developed something even more ambitious: a systematic overseas aid program exceeding one billion dollars annually—more than many traditional donor nations spend. Rather than just writing checks, Brazilian aid focuses on transferring technical expertise and knowledge. Most of this assistance goes to Africa, particularly Portuguese-speaking African countries, and to Latin American neighbors. Observers have called Brazil's approach a "global model in waiting."
Building Financial Independence
For years, developing nations faced a frustrating chicken-and-egg problem. They wanted to reduce their dependence on Western-controlled institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. But creating alternatives required capital they didn't have. Where would the money come from to start a development bank of their own?
The rise of the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—changed this calculation.
At their sixth summit in July 2014, the five partners approved the creation of the New Development Bank, sometimes called the BRICS Development Bank. Based in Shanghai, it focuses primarily on infrastructure lending. Simultaneously, they established a Contingency Reserve Agreement worth over one hundred billion dollars, with Russia contributing eighteen billion. This reserve fund gives BRICS countries an alternative to the IMF when economic difficulties strike—no structural adjustment required.
China went further, spearheading the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank based in Beijing. By 2016, more than fifty countries had expressed interest in joining, including wealthy nations like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. This was striking: developed countries were signing up for an institution explicitly designed as an alternative to Western-dominated development finance.
China also pushed for an Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area that would supersede existing bilateral and multilateral agreements across the region. The 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit endorsed a roadmap for studying this possibility.
Special Economic Zones and the China Model
Between 1990 and 2018, Chinese enterprises established eleven special economic zones across sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Nigeria hosts two; others operate in Zambia, Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mauritania, Egypt, Oman, and Algeria.
Special economic zones are designated areas where different rules apply—typically lower taxes, reduced regulations, and streamlined bureaucracy. China used such zones domestically to spectacular effect, creating export-oriented manufacturing hubs that drove decades of rapid growth. Shenzhen, once a fishing village, became a metropolis of over twelve million people largely through its status as a special economic zone.
Now China is attempting to export this model. The zones aim to transfer Chinese development methods to other countries while creating business opportunities for Chinese manufacturers. Companies operating in these zones can avoid trade barriers by producing goods in countries that have preferential access to important markets. The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation actively promotes these initiatives.
The Chinese government takes a relatively hands-off approach, letting enterprises take the lead rather than directing operations centrally. But support flows through grants, loans, subsidies, and the China Africa Development Fund.
Agricultural Knowledge Transfers
China announced its Agricultural Technology Demonstration Centers at the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting. The rationale combined ideological commitment with practical concerns about food security.
Between 2006 and 2018, China launched nineteen of these centers, all in sub-Saharan Africa. By 2023, the network had expanded to twenty-four African countries. The centers transmit agricultural expertise and technology from China while creating market opportunities for Chinese agricultural companies.
This represents a fundamentally different approach than traditional agricultural aid. Rather than shipping food or sending temporary advisers, China builds permanent facilities designed to develop local capacity over the long term.
Scientific and Technological Collaboration
Science diplomacy has emerged as another dimension of South–South cooperation. China and Russia maintain what observers call "dynamic bilateral collaboration" stemming from their 2001 Treaty of Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation. The treaty generates four-year implementation plans that have produced dozens of large-scale joint projects.
The scope is remarkable. Partners are constructing China's first super-high-voltage electricity transmission line and developing an experimental fast neutron reactor. They're conducting geological prospecting in both countries and collaborating on research in optics, metal processing, hydraulics, and aerodynamics. Priority areas include industrial and medical lasers, computer technology, energy systems, environmental science, and new materials development.
Regional scientific institutions have also emerged. The International Science, Technology and Innovation Centre for South–South Cooperation opened in Malaysia in 2008 under UNESCO's auspices. It has since facilitated programs like a 2014 workshop in Tobago on "Technopreneurship for the Caribbean."
The SESAME facility—Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East—represents an even more ambitious model. A synchrotron is essentially a giant particle accelerator that produces extremely bright light, useful for everything from studying protein structures to developing new materials. Such facilities cost hundreds of millions of dollars. By pooling resources, Middle Eastern countries gained access to capabilities none could afford alone.
Space: The Brazil-China Partnership
Perhaps no South–South cooperation project better illustrates what's possible than the space partnership between Brazil and China.
As of 2023, the two countries had jointly developed and launched six China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellites. These satellites monitor environmental changes, track deforestation, assess agricultural conditions, and support disaster response. Both nations gained access to satellite imagery that would have been impossibly expensive to develop independently.
The partnership stands out as a rare example of two developing countries collaborating in space, a domain typically dominated by wealthy nations and their space agencies. It demonstrates that South–South cooperation can extend even to the most technically demanding fields.
Climate Change and Clean Energy
China has emerged as a global leader in clean energy technology, and it's actively sharing this expertise with other developing nations. The flagship initiative is the "Ten, Hundred, Thousand" program for South–South climate cooperation, announced in 2016.
The numbers refer to ambitious targets: ten low-carbon demonstration zones, one hundred climate change mitigation projects, and one thousand cooperation projects for climate change training. By 2023, China had signed partnerships with at least twenty-seven other developing countries. The Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar have signed memorandums of understanding to develop low-carbon demonstration zones.
Brazil and China established the China-Brazil Center for Climate Change and Energy Technology Innovation, described as one of the most ambitious South-South bilateral clean energy programs anywhere.
This matters enormously for global climate efforts. Developing nations are often told they can't industrialize because the planet can't handle more carbon emissions. South–South cooperation offers an alternative: developing nations can industrialize using clean technologies, leapfrogging the dirty industrial phase that wealthy nations passed through.
Migration Corridors
When people think of migration, they often picture movement from poor countries to rich ones—Mexicans crossing into the United States, Africans seeking Europe. But migration between Global South countries constitutes at least one-third of all international migration.
Most of this movement happens between neighboring countries. A remarkable ninety-eight percent of immigrants to India, for instance, recorded their previous residence as somewhere else in Asia. This makes sense: migration is expensive and risky, and nearby destinations are more accessible.
More recently, though, longer-distance South–South migration has increased. The South Asian diaspora in the Middle East now represents the largest such migration corridor in the world. Workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have flowed to the oil-rich Gulf states, filling positions from construction to domestic service to professional roles.
Security and the Dream of a "NATO of the South"
South–South cooperation has always been primarily economic, but security discussions have periodically emerged. At the 2009 Africa-South America Summit, Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi proposed a defense alliance between the two continents.
He called it a "NATO of the South."
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, was formed in 1949 as a Western military alliance, originally to counter the Soviet Union. Its core principle is collective defense: an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. Gaddafi's proposal would have created a parallel structure for the Global South.
Nothing came of the idea—Gaddafi was overthrown and killed two years later during Libya's civil war. But the proposal illustrated the scope of ambition within South–South cooperation. Some leaders envisioned not just economic partnership but a fundamental restructuring of global power arrangements.
Sports Diplomacy: The Cuban Model
Cuba has carved out an unexpected niche in South–South cooperation: sports training. Despite its small size and limited resources, Cuba has produced Olympic champions across numerous sports and maintains world-class coaching expertise.
Rather than keeping this knowledge at home, Cuba has offered sports training programs to a wide variety of developing countries. Athletes and coaches travel to Cuba for training, while Cuban coaches deploy abroad. Multi-sport events have become vehicles for what observers call "sports diplomacy"—building relationships through athletic competition and cooperation.
This might seem like a minor contribution compared to development banks and satellite programs. But sports carry enormous cultural significance. They create people-to-people connections that economic agreements alone cannot. A Cuban boxing coach training fighters in Angola builds relationships that last long after the official programs end.
The Transformation Underway
When Sukarno opened the Bandung Conference in 1955, he was articulating an aspiration more than describing a reality. The newly independent nations remained economically weak, technologically backward, and dependent on their former colonial masters.
Seven decades later, the landscape has transformed. China has become the world's second-largest economy and a leader in renewable energy technology. India produces more computer scientists annually than any other country. Brazil runs a foreign aid program that rivals wealthy European nations.
South–South cooperation didn't cause all of this development. But it helped. Countries learned from each other's successes and failures. They built institutions that didn't require Western approval. They created financial mechanisms that offered alternatives to conditions-laden IMF loans.
Most importantly, they proved that the Global South could be more than a collection of aid recipients waiting for Northern generosity. These nations could be partners, investors, innovators, and leaders.
The cooperation hasn't solved all problems. Many participating countries still struggle with poverty, corruption, and weak institutions. Some critics argue that China's engagement simply replaces Western dominance with Chinese dominance, creating new dependencies rather than true independence. Others note that authoritarian regimes have enthusiastically embraced South–South cooperation precisely because it comes without the human rights conditions that Western aid sometimes includes.
These criticisms have merit. But they shouldn't obscure what has been achieved. The world order that Sukarno challenged—one where a handful of wealthy nations made decisions and everyone else accepted them—has genuinely weakened. New centers of power have emerged. New pathways to development have opened.
The masters are, finally, in their own house.
``` The article opens with the compelling story of the 1955 Bandung Conference rather than a dry definition. It explains the "Global South" concept from first principles, covers the major institutions and initiatives (BRICS banks, special economic zones, agricultural centers), and includes engaging details like the Brazil-China space partnership and Gaddafi's "NATO of the South" proposal. The conclusion is balanced, acknowledging criticisms while connecting back to Sukarno's original vision.