Challenges

Developing countries, including Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) member countries, undertake South-South and Triangular Cooperation  (SSTrC) in different ways, using various approaches, institutional arrangements, and methodologies at the national level, influenced by various factors, including, but not limited to, existing capacities at the institutional, organizational, and human levels. While a lot has been achieved through SSTrC, the pace of improvements in national institutional frameworks has lagged behind. This is a constraint for unleashing the full potential of SSTrC.

In order to address this challenge, the Bank, based on its experiences in both field and analytical work, and in collaboration with its member countries, South Center and the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), developed the framework of National Ecosystem for SSTrC.

Toward a Solution

The National Ecosystem is a set of institutional arrangements that should help member countries to fully benefit from and participate in South-South and Triangular Cooperation. It comprises seven key pillars, namely: (i) political will; (ii) a national strategy for SSTrC; (iii) a  national body that acts as the focal point for SSTrC interventions; (iv) information bases that enable countries to map their national capabilities and development solutions that can be shared with others while also identifying issues that can be addressed through SSTrC; (iv) connected actors that coordinate their SSTrC efforts and activities in order to harmonize their interventions and amplify the effect of their work; (v) national financing mechanisms that provide the necessary resources for countries to engage in SSTrC regionally and globally; and (vi) performance management systems that allow countries to assess how well they are fulfilling their SSTrC engagements and to find ways to continuously improve

The formulation of the Bank’s “national ecosystems for the SSTrC” framework provided a solution to the theoretical discussion on which elements should constitute the institutional arrangements in any given country that can enable engagement in SSTrC by making the best use of their domestic expertise and resources to help other countries in need, while also benefiting from others in addressing their own national development challenges.

One of the advantages of supporting member countries establish or strengthen their national ecosystems for SSTrC is that the depth and breadth of cooperation in sharing perspectives and experiences in economic development would deepen and improve, not only through an increased inflow of SSTrC (beneficiaries) but also from the outflow (providers) of such sharing of expertise.

Member Countries that have strong national ecosystem pillars in place will become providers to other countries that require capacity development. Furthermore, countries with relatively strong ecosystems can still benefit from this program to complete the development of the seven pillars of the national ecosystem for SSTrC. By facilitating the exchange of institutional capacity and expertise on SSTrC among Member Countries as well as those from the Global South, the framework will contribute to the Bank’s goal of being a “Bank of Development and Developers.

To operationalize the framework of national ecosystems for SSTrC to benefit the member countries, the Bank also formulated the “Capacity Development Program for Enhancing National Ecosystems for SSTrC in IsDB Member Countries,” which was approved in December 2019. This program aims to assist member countries in developing their national ecosystems for SSTrC, enabling them to meaningfully engage in SSTrC interventions at sub-national, national, regional, and global levels. The program is being implemented using the Bank’s Reverse Linkage modality as one of the chief implementation mechanisms. Reverse Linkage is a scaled-up technical cooperation mechanism that facilitates the exchange of know-how, expertise and resources to solve development challenges. .

In the implementation of the subject capacity development program of the IsDB, one of the important steps is to undertake country-specific assessments of the existing national ecosystems for SSTrC. The assessment process is expected to reveal a country’s capacity requirements, which will then be followed up with the design and implementation of a tailored capacity development intervention. To undertake the country-specific assessments, the Bank has developed a comprehensive “Assessment Framework for National Ecosystems for SSTrC”. This framework is made up of a country context analysis, which analyzes the position of a country as a provider as well as recipient. As the preliminary step in assessment, the country context analysis aims at developing a basic understanding of the history, boundaries, and key features of the institutional SSTrC arrangements of the country in question. Then for each pillar of the SSTrC ecosystem, the assessment framework recommends applying certain criteria, each of which is assessed through raising a set of questions. After the overall country context analysis, the assessment framework goes into detailed analyses of each of the pillars of the national ecosystem of a country. This Assessment Framework is currently being deployed in several IsDB member countries, which will serve the Bank and partners as a diagnostic toolkit and provide the necessary insights for formulating robust capacity development interventions for enhancing the national ecosystems for SSTrC.

Under the capacity development program, the Bank initiated interventions in the member countries that started to yield tangible results. For instance, the Bank established a partnership between the Tunisian Technical Cooperation Agency (ATCT) and the Guinean Technical Cooperation Agency (AGCT). Through Reverse Linkage, the Bank financed the recruitment of two Tunisian experts to develop the capacity of the AGCT. This partnership led to the preparation and adoption of the key deliverables such as AGCT statutes, organization chart, and administrative and finance manual and AGCT three-year action plan and operational tools. The statutes of AGCT prepared thanks to the Bank’s support, were approved during the Council of Ministers meeting in June 2020.