NKWAH Akongnwi NGWA: South-South Development Cooperation: The impact of Emerging Donors’ Aid on African Countries (The Case of Sino-Cameroonian Aid Relations) resulted in a new-found interest (internally as well as externally) in the economic and political potentials of SSC. India and Brazil now see southern votes as essential in gaining a seat in an enlarged UN Security Council (if their quest to reform the UN system is successful), China perceives political and economic connections to the South as a way to fight the US hegemony, and all the big countries of the South “share a belief in their entitlement to a more influential role in world affairs”80. Thus, the purpose of this section is not to add any new information to the abundance that is already available on failed efforts to bring about economic cooperation in the South in the past. It is rather to describe the contextual, structural and domestic changes which have taken place within the south for the past two decades (Paragraph 1) as well as the perception, expectations, modalities of recipients and donors in the contemporary context of SSDC (Paragraph 2).
Paragraph I: Global SSDC Changes in a Historical Perspective SSC has existed for at least six decades. It received international attention in 1955 when African and Asian nations held a conference in Bandung, Indonesia, to promote economic and cultural cooperation. The Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPOA) of 1978, as outcome of the United Nations Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, for the first time provided a strategic framework for SSC. However, SSC has become much more prominent in international discussions in the last decade, as rapid economic growth by major Southern economies has led to a greater role in international economic affairs. Their successful development experiences have also increased the potential for Southern providers to offer a wider range of technical development expertise, goods and services, and therefore a huge expansion of financial and technical cooperation. We are going to study these changes from a contextual view point (A) as well as from a structural and domestic view point (B) which will enable us to realize that one thing remains clear: the creative economy sector represents a huge area of opportunity for SSDC.
Contextual Changes in South-South Cooperation We are going to examine these changes from various perspectives within the global south. This will allow us to apprehend the evolution of SSC from a historical perspective. For analytical purpose, looking at these changes within the South, we need to consider four main dimensions: Economic interdependence, the rise of information society, non-state actors, and southern Diasporas.
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Hurrell , A.” Hegemony, liberalism and global order: what space for would-be great powers?” International Affairs, 82(1): 119. 2006
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