The African Development Bank’s board of directors has approved the untied grant of $6 million from Brazil to create a trust fund designed to promote south-south cooperation.
The South-South Cooperation Trust Fund will be managed by AfDB’s Partnerships and Cooperation Unit. It aims to advance sharing of development knowledge, expertise and appropriate technologies between African countries and developing regions outside Africa in the areas of agriculture and agribusiness, clean energy, environment, governance, health, private sector development and social development.
The fund will specifically support the following activities:
- Technical assistance in the preparation of policy and sector studies, research and analysis.
- Organization of seminars, workshops, conferences for networking, consultation and knowledge sharing on policy issues and economic development experiences and publications.
- Capacity building and human resources development through training.
- Piloting of innovative approaches to solve development challenges in AfDB’s regional members.
- Other technical assistance activities aimed at enhancing south-south cooperation in Africa.
Although currently a single-donor facility, SSCTF is designed to eventually become a multidonor trust fund.
According to the agreement between Brazil and AfDB on the new program, the Latin American donor will provide the first tranche of $1 million to the fund during the last quarter of 2011, the second tranche of $3 million in 2012, and the remaining tranche worth $2 million in 2013. The two latter tranches would be made available “upon request” by AfDB.
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