The Evolution of South-South Development Cooperation: Guiding Principles and Approaches

Abstract

South-South Cooperation (SSC) has attracted the attention of the development community in terms of both its ‘impact’ on traditional aid and the integration of its values into the work of multilateral institutions, making it the new ‘buzzword’ of the aid community. However, few studies have been carried out to understand the rationale of SSC and how it influences the approaches followed in its development assistance activities or ‘South-South Development Cooperation’ (SSDC). Therefore, this article explores the origins and development of the SSC concept from the perspectives of southern countries and shows how they affect the narrative related to the implementation model of SSDC. The research uses a narrative literature review focusing on southern countries’ understandings of both SSC and SSDC, thus enabling two sets of categorization: one for the conceptual elements in the definition of SSC outside its geographical component and the other for the guiding principles and approaches of SSDC.