How can South-South Cooperation transform economies and help low-income countries to jump start dynamic growth and development?
Comments (34)
Thank you, Eduardo, for the information. To promote hubs in Latin America, Governments must lead the processes and establish fiscal incentives creating private - public cooperation.
Eduardo, could you give more details about innovation hubs?
Maybe we don´t have indexes for innovation, but we have stadistics of how the investment impacts in growth. So, we can show how this investment has facilitate the growth and development of succesfull countries.
I agree with Carlos Gustavo. Innovation in technology, trading, operations, supply chain, etc is definitively an area where South-South Cooperation should be contributing to. There are many innovation hubs in the Global South – e.g. UAE, India, South Africa, and many others. The question is what would encourage governments and firms to increase South-South Cooperation in the area of innovation? Any examples?
I think that a first step that governments and firms should take is to measure innovation. I haven´t found a serious index of innovation for Latin American countries. All indexes are for developed countries, at least the ones that I have found.
Dr. Carlos Gustavo Machicado - The Global Innovation Index 2017 measures innovation in 130 countries: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_gii_2017.pdf
Let´s go to the roots of this debate. I want to ask Valentina how she defines "development". I don´t agree with a concept related to pure and simple economic growth. We must include in the definition the ideas of sustainability and human development. The South South Cooperation must have a broad vision about the process to avoid the mistakes done in the past with traditional cooperation.
I agree, development is more than economic growth. The Social Progress Index (https://www.socialprogressindex.com/) is the best index that I have seen that doesn´t include economic variables to measure progress/development.
Dr. Carlos Gustavo Machicado Thanks for sharing the link. With consideration to opportunity, this index better encompasses Amartya Sen's ideas on the definition of development .
Liwen Zhang That´s true, the SPI is based on Amartya Sen´s idea
The South faces many problems; political, ecomic, social and enviromental problems. All this problems are being pushed to the edge because the changes in the political configuration in all the world: new governments with nationalist and anti inmigrants policies, the refugees crisis and the post economic crisis scope from 2008.
In this scenario, the coworking, the networks, sharing knowledge and building similar horizons become more than urgent. In this way, all the specialized knowled of think tanks and cooperants become a huge bank from where we can take the most appropiate and effective answer to the problems of our countries.
I think that one of the areas where the region is far behind from the north is in the area of innovation. It is especially important to share experiences regarding innovation in technology, management, processes, etc. in particular to get the knowledge about which type of policies to promote innovation work and which doesn´t.
I´m agree; our countries have had particular problems to innovate and transformr their productivo structures from primarely producers to economies with more value added. If we don´t work to change this, probable our economis will be doomed to the poverty.
I agree, but I think that the problem has to be adressed from the side of the firms also. I am sure that firms from our region don´t understand exactly the concept of innovation and so they don´t know how to innovate.
I am not into economics but in a social perspective, I can see that South regions still have cultural particularities, belong to our traditional cultures, that can be used as a motor of new ways of markets, technologies, networks, perspectives. These ones set a solid base to promote SDG's.
Agree. But since countries are culturally different from each other, there might be gaps in the cooperative relationship...I think cultural issue is really an interesting topic. Look forward to learning more about that.
Commercially-oriented sources and types of state financing between developing countries might play an important role in facilitating LIC's economic growth and creating win-win relations between fast-growing emerging economies and late developed countries. An interesting article on state financing from China to Africa : http://aiddata.org/sites/default/files/wps15_apples_and_dragon_fruits.p…;
It is crucial to ensure upstream policy support. A favorable policy environment will enable countries across the global South to work together in support of common development objectives. There are increasing opportunities to share policy, lessons learned and best practices in one country that could be leveraged to enhance policy-making capacities in another. Looking forward, we can expect more dialogue at the highest policy level, through high-level platforms and events, including workshops and other effective channels.
Agree. Do you have examples of favorable public policy to share?
Eduardo Pereira China’s pioneering role as the largest contributor in supporting the mechanism could be one example. Chinese government has always attached great importance to South-South Cooperation, regarding its friendly cooperation with other developing countries as an important cornerstone of its foreign policy. As far as I know, in terms of agricultural development, the country has donated a total financial grant of $80 million to establish of the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Trust Fund.
A great article about the south-south cooperation and the rise of the global south.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2015.1128817?src=r…;
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. How do you see the rise of South-South Cooperation in the context of the Sustainable development Goals?
As a follow up question "What characteristics do successful cases of South-South Cooperation bringing structural transformation for low-income economies have in common?"
In our experience, any cooperation and collaboration that can have truly meaningful impact relies on a couple of characteristics - e.g. a balanced mix of empirical research and thorough analysis of reliable data, that can subsequently lead to evidence-based policy recommendations.
What do you mean exactly by structural transformation?
Can anybody provide a successful case? When we say it is South-South Cooperation that bring structural transformation for a low-income economy, we need to prove a causal link between them. I think more empirical studies on it are needed before we can answer this question.
That's a very meaningful question. I think first we need more strict definition about "successful cases", "structural transformation", and "low income economies".
That is an inspiring question. As far as I know, a comprehensive, international framework to measure and monitor South–South cooperation is yet to be realized. And gathering comprehensive data and information on South–South cooperation is still a challenge. To support evidence-based decisions, increased accountability, and ultimately better cooperation outcomes, South-South cooperation providers (policy makers, experts, etc.) should respond to the growing demand for more transparency.
Dr. Carlos Gustavo Machicado - New structural transformation is as a third wave of development thinking that uses a neoclassical approach to study the determinants of economic structure and its evolution in a country’s economic development. In brief, a country’s economic structure at any given time is endogenous to its factor endowments – the amounts of capital, labor, and natural resources at that time. Countries at different development stages vary in their relative abundance of factor endowments. In developing countries, capital is generally relatively scarce, while labor and often natural resources are comparatively abundant. In developed countries, capital is relatively abundant, while labor is comparatively scarce. Although an economy’s factor endowments are given at any particular period, they can change over time. New structural transformation posits economy’s factor endowments as the starting point for development analysis because they determine an economy’s total budget and relative factor prices at that time, which are two of the most important parameters in modern economic analysis. This paper explains the concept and its application in more detail: https://www.ssc-globalthinkers.org/knowledge-products/Industrial-Polici…;
SS collaboration and cooperation in the form of this kind of platform is a great start! Spurring on transformation and promotion of LIC growth and development via the proactive transfer sharing of knowledge is crucial. Be that by sharing our knowledge, innovative or routine research, evidence-based policy recommendations, and/or expert insights and practices, etc. We can all learn from each other so much more effectively through the exposure and engagement that SSC offers...
For example, much of the DPRU’s research work on South Africa reveals that in order to deal with the high unemployment levels, high poverty levels and inequality rates, South Africa’s growth needs to be pro-poor. At the national level, some policies have been shown to create more economic hurdles than spur economic growth. The South African government has been faulted for failing to efficiently allocate research and development funds towards sectors that would create jobs and encourage economic growth. These findings could be just the valuable lessons that other LICs, who also need the stimulation of pro-poor growth in their own economies, really need.
Agree, and LICs also need to be very cautious when they decide what to learn from more successful developing countries with rapid economic growth. Because there is no panacea for all countries and policy prescriptions are context specific, which protrudes the role of sound research with comprehensive case studies and thorough debate. The collaboration between think tanks on this kind of platform is really a good start.
Hi Sarah, could you go deeper on the "pro-poor" concept? Thanks
Verónica Enríquez Ruiz - sure! This concept is highly applicable in South Africa's context, where our long-term economic growth has resulted in somewhat of a decline in aggregate levels of household poverty, but increasing levels of inequality. Basically, our current democratic growth model is crafted around providing substantial redistributive income support to the poor through an extensive social grant programme i.e. social welfare - which has resulted in the fall of both both absolute and relative levels of poverty. Our director, Prof Haroon Bhorat has an interesting article on this topic here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0376835X.2013.878242
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Sure. Innovation hubs, or innovation clusters, are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions working in innovation related industries (science, technology, engineering, etc.). Many innovation clusters include governmental and other institutions—such as universities, standards-setting agencies, think tanks, vocational training providers, and trade associations—that provide specialized training, education, information, research, and technical support. The latest Global Innovation Index has a chapter on innovation hubs/clusters you may find interesting. China and India are ranking high in the list: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/