The global development landscape has fundamentally changed allowing for new forms of partnership and cooperation to flourish. Traditionally aid flowed from the developed North to the developing South. Now developing countries are building economic and other cooperation relationships between each other at an unprecedented rate.
South-South Cooperation represents the exchange of knowledge and resources between governments, organizations and individuals in developing countries, or those from what is known as the Global South. This may be based on individual or shared development objectives. North-South-South Cooperation or Triangular Cooperation describes two or more developing countries collaborating with a third developed country which contributes knowledge, technology and resources.
Emerging economies play an increasingly visible role in international education cooperation with a move from traditional transfers of money to technical and knowledge transfers. As the landscape has shifted, UNESCO’s role has evolved. It has always promoted partnership, the sharing of information and best practices and networking as an essential feature of its work in education. Now as leader of the Education 2030 Agenda, it is even more firmly placed to act as broker, instigator and convenor of new and stronger partnership arrangements on a global, inter-regional, regional or national scale.
South-south cooperation in action
UNESCO seeks to forge equal partnerships between countries, in particular by strengthening technical cooperation between developing countries and attracting funding from new and emerging donors. It cooperates with Member States, civil society, and the academic world and promotes public-private partnerships in education.
UNESCO’s pivotal functions in this role include providing a common platform for engagement through international and regional fora, acting as a clearing house to share good practices in education, building networks and communities of practice and rewarding innovative and outstanding projects through prizes.
Examples of projects promoting south south cooperation
Capacity development
Teacher education
- Enhancing teacher education in Africa
- Building the capacities of teachers and teacher trainers
- Enhancing teacher participation in social dialogue
Girls’ and women’s education
- UNESCO Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education
- UNESCO-CJ Strategic Partnership for Girls’ Education
- UNESCO-HNA Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education
- Empowering adolescent girls and young women through education
Technical and vocational education and training
ICT in education
- ICT transforming education in Africa
- Best practices in mobile learning
- Leveraging ICT to achieve education 2030
Good practices
- Effective Literacy and Numeracy Practices Database (LitBase)
- UNESCO HIV and Health Education Clearinghouse
- IIEP Learning Portal
International and regional fora
- Collective Consultation of NGOs on Education 2030
- E-9 partnership
- Education 2030 in Africa
- Education 2030 in the Arab States
Networks and knowledge exchange
- UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities
- UNESCO Associated Schools Network
- UNEVOC Network Portal
- MGEIP clearing house on global citizenship education
- International Centre for Higher Education Innovation
Prizes
- UNESCO International Literacy Prizes
- UNESCO-Japan Prize on education for sustainable development
- UNESCO Prize for girls' and women's education
- UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize for outstanding practice and performance in enhancing the effectiveness of teachers
- UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the use of information and communication technologies in education