By Kang Hyun-kyung
The nation’s aid agency will sign partnership agreements with Brazil and Germany, respectively, during the three-day global aid forum to be held in the southeastern port city of Busan from today.
This ultimately aims at forging triangular partnerships to help poorer nations better fight development challenges such as child mortality and poverty.
Under the Korea-Germany partnership scheme, for example, the European country will sponsor Korea to help a poor country effectively reduce poverty by passing on Korea’s development knowhow.
In an interview with The Korea Times last Friday, Park Dae-won, chairman of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), underscored the significance of forming innovative partnerships to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid.
“For several decades, the international community has sought in vain to improve aid effectiveness to help poor countries cut the vicious circle of poverty. But none, except Korea, became self-reliant,” he said.
This sparked soul-searching among aid experts regarding what caused poor nations to remain recipients relying on foreign aid, Park said.
During the previous three aid forums held in Rome, Paris and Akra of Ghana, they haven’t found the answer.
“The Busan forum will be a landmark event, as leaders, aid workers and experts are to shift their focus onto sustainable development from development assistance,” the KOICA chairman said.
During the three-day forum, Park is scheduled to meet with several ministers from developing countries and chiefs of aid agencies from advanced nations to exchange views on foreign aid.
Trilateral partnerships, among advanced donors, its development partner having development knowhow and a poor nation relying on aid, are one of the ideas that came up after a decades-long search by donor governments for more effective tactics.
Under the trilateral cooperation with Brazil, for example, KOICA will work closely together with the Latin American county when the aid agency launches aid programs in South America.
“Brazil has knowhow and a deeper understanding of their neighbors. This will make it easier for us to draw up a development plan suitable for Latin America,” Park said.
Brazil, one of the BRICS nations referring to five rising economies, namely China, India, Russia, and South Africa, succeeded in making its economy taking off.
Korea achieved the rank of the world’s 13th largest economy owing to the government-led push for the so-called export-led economic growth during the industrialization period.
Despite the similarity in their developmental stage, the path that the Latin American country has taken is very different from that of Korea.
The Korean style of development model could reveal its limitations when the aid agency attempts to transplant it in Latin America as nations there have very different socio-economic circumstances.
“South America is just like Brazil’s front yard, meaning it knows a lot about the countries. It has deeper understanding of how these economies work,” Park said. “If Brazil, with Korea’s technical assistance, takes the initiative in the development plan based on its experience and expertise, it can help its neighbors rise from poverty more effectively than Korea does it alone.”
The forthcoming aid cooperation will take a similar form Korea inked with the United States in June on the sidelines of the foreign ministers’ talks held in Washington.
After signing the triangular partnerships with Brazil and Germany, the KOICA will step up efforts to forge a similar pact with other donor states, including France, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Over the past decades, donors and aid workers have sought a variety of innovative partnerships to improve effectiveness of foreign aid.
During the G20 Summit held in Cannes, France earlier this month, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates presented innovative partnerships before the leaders of the world’s richest nations.
In the so-called Gates’ report, he mentioned the triangular partnerships among Brazil, Japan and Mozambique as an example of an innovative aid partnership.
Under the scheme, Brazil is cooperating with Japan to help poor farmers in Mozambique grow soybeans.
In the 1980s, Japan helped Brazil grow soybeans in its tropical savanna region by providing technical assistance. Since then, soybeans have become one of Brazil’s most important crops.
Now the Latin American country, with financial support from Japan, is helping Mozambiquan farmers grow soybeans.