South-South cooperation for development: an introduction

Abstract

T he increasing role of South-South cooperation (SSC) is one of the key transformations concerning international development cooperation in the twenty-first century. This role relates not only to enhancing resources dedicated to promoting international development, but also to normative and conceptual issues related to what international development refers to and how to measure funding, goals and targets. Unlike countries that have been reporting to the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (DAC/OECD) for decades, the so-called “emerging donors” or “southern providers” find themselves in a double task: on the one hand, becoming familiar with all the historical construction that resulted in the current patterns of data collection on international development cooperation; on the other hand, elaborating appropriate methodologies to the particularities of their international insertion as developing countries.