Unleashing the Potential and scaling up Successful South-South and Triangular cooperation in Sudan
The project document has been endorsed to build and increase its importance and relevance of South-South cooperation. The strategy of the project is to empower Sudan’s development policy and international cooperation so as to better pursue Sudan’s development goals and foreign policies through South-South cooperation.
The key outputs of the project document were to strengthen the inter-governmental system and government institutions to support decentralization for effective service delivery and to contribute to the recovery processes in a long term at local level. In addition, another output is to establish public and social accountability mechanisms to improve the effectiveness of public resource allocation.
The terms of reference for the establishment of the National Coordination Unit for South-South Cooperation were adopted and the unit was established based on a concept note. In addition, focal points in key line ministries were nominated. Furthermore, government contribution to support the unit were agreed and a series of awareness sessions and participatory training workshops for South-South and triangular cooperation were conducted.
Other successful cases of South-South cooperation in Sudan are:
- The Government of Sudan has built numerous internal roads connecting with neighboring countries such as Central Africa Republic, Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and South Sudan. The highway roads connecting Sudan with Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia and South Sudan were also completed.
- A demand-driven approach is successful in the field of transportation and agriculture. For instance, the Brazilian–Sudanese agribusiness company is one of the most prominent South-South cooperation private sector initiatives. Sudanese food security initiative endorsed by the Arab League that aims to attract Arab countries to invest in food security projects in Sudan is one of the successful practices of scaling up South-South cooperation in the region. This initiative fits very well as an example of triangular cooperation model. Arab investments in Sudan in the area of agriculture and more industries in pharmaceuticals totals in 16 billion US dollars.
- Sudan also initiated investment in ICT sector in the neighboring countries such as Ghana, Mauritania and Senegal. This project works very well in terms of profitability and provision of ICT services. The rationale for expanding South-South cooperation is that Sudan has a comprehensive advantage given its geographical location and represents a geo-political and economic interest for both Arab region and African region.
In terms of partnerships, Sudanese foreign policy has principles which are consonant with those of South-South cooperation such as national sovereignty, accountability, equality, transparency, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs, and mutual benefit. Sudan strongly believes that South-South cooperation is not a substitute for but rather a complement to North-South cooperation. In recent years, the practice of South-South cooperation has expanded in Sudan due to political and economic factors relating to sanctions and embargos, and unilateral and cohesive measures which forced Sudan to strengthen its partnerships with prominent emerging countries. For instance, Sudan and Brazil have engaged in strategic partnerships for two decades in various sectors, particularly in agricultural activities. As a result, Sudan is now capitalizing on South-South cooperation in the area of food security.
Sudan values other countries’ cooperation agencies such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA), etc. for the continued support and implementation of numerous small and medium scale projects in Sudan covering many areas.
The major challenges and gaps in Sudan include lack of knowledge on South-South and triangular cooperation, absence of formulation of comprehensive national policies and problem of data collection and compilation. The development disparities between various regions of Sudan fuelled by internal violence constitute one of the biggest challenges to promote South-South cooperation within Sudan.