The aim to enhance the variety of Turkish development cooperation together with the intention to address the development challenges of the LDCs where there is no Turkish Cooperation Agency (TIKA) presence resulted in a triangular cooperation initiative involving the Government of Turkey, the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS (UNDP RBEC), and UNDP Country Offices and implementing partners in five LDCs. Within this framework, five projects in Angola, Rwanda, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Lao PDR were funded and implemented:  

• Smart governance implementation in Benin;  
• Building renewable energy distribution network in DRC; 
• Enhancing gender equality in the private sector in Rwanda; 
• Strengthening early warning systems and unexploded ordnance (UXO) risk education in Lao PDR; and  
• Vocational training for women and youth in Angola.  

The goal of the initiative is to address the priority challenges determined by the LDCs themselves. Turkey as the donor and UNDP RBEC as implementing partner achieved this by carrying out a monitoring and evaluating role. TIKA also participated in the activities of the UNDP Country Offices where possible. Within this context, Turkey’s support is basically financial, allowing capacity development, improvement of governance systems, building infrastructure, awareness-raising, and contributions to national regulations. 

The initiative addressed IPoA Priority Areas 1 (Productive capacity development), 5 (Human and social development), and 8 (Good governance). In addition, SDGs 17 (Partnerships for the Goals), 1 (No Poverty), 4 (Quality Education), 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), 8 (Decent Word and Economic Growth), 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) were addressed within the scope of the programme. SDGs and IPoA priorities played a crucial role from the very beginning; in evaluating project proposals and implementation. This initiative provided an opportunity to concurrently address the development challenges of the partner countries through a demand-driven approach, and to test new modes of development cooperation (triangular cooperation) for Turkey. The programme was also designed in a participatory approach among stakeholders, including the relevant public entities in partner countries, Turkish embassies, and UNDP country offices in those countries.  

Through the programme, 100 young people completed apprenticeships in different areas in public and private companies and 165 young entrepreneurs and informal workers benefitted from capacity development activities within the scope of SDG 8 in Angola.  In accordance with the targets set in SDG 5, 25 companies and public institutions completed gender organizational diagnoses and implemented their gender equality action plans.  Over 600 Rwanda Private Sector Federation members were trained in gender equality.  

The cross-country transfers have proven successful and sustainable when the recipient country is willing to scale up the efforts regarding challenges. The initiative resulted in a concrete policy impact in the vocational training area, in which Turkey has significant global experience.  For example, a Presidential Decree numbered 300/20 related to apprenticeship was issued in Angola within the technical support of the project. Rwanda has also adopted a gender mainstreaming strategy. It is important to work with the actors that have the ability to influence policies in the recipient country.  

This regional programmatic instrument to facilitate cooperation between Turkey and UNDP in third countries that enable the participation of other partners has been an innovative partnership and a replicable model for triangular cooperation.  Receiving applications for support under this programme from countries faced with different challenges made a flexible and tailored contribution possible. Gathering around an agreed priority makes triangular cooperation successful. Therefore, it is not difficult to internalize this principle and replicate it. This innovative aspect is manifested through a wide range of partnerships established during the implementation of the specific projects, including beneficiary country governments, UNDP Country Offices, TIKA Cosponsoring Organizations (CCOs), and Turkish embassies.  

As both a recipient and donor country, Turkey knows the importance of demand-driven projects. Rather than being decided by donors in advance, development partnership priorities need to be determined together with the recipient countries. Therefore, there is a need for the donors to be more flexible regarding the areas on which they cooperate. One lesson learned from the programme is about the roles of the donors when it comes to multi-donor projects, which require more attention in terms of monitoring. Moreover, communication between the actors in the field is very important in terms of both visibility and effectiveness.