South-South Cooperation: How Solutions Journey

What if an answer that works in a single nation may work in one other?

That query is the premise of South-South cooperation. On 12 September, the United Nations marks the day set aside for it. 

Here is what it seems like in 2026: three options that travelled, and three international locations turning that alternate into everlasting follow.

What is South-South Cooperation?

South-South cooperation is the follow of nations within the Global South sharing data, abilities and confirmed options with each other to deal with widespread challenges. Expertise strikes between international locations dealing with related constraints, comparable climates, or establishments, which is way of why the options switch properly.

What Does South-South Cooperation Look Like in Practice?

South-South seems like a Chinese agricultural professional standing in a Ugandan rice discipline, or a water-testing methodology from rural India being taught in a Miskito village in Honduras. 

Uganda and China: Agricultural Techniques

For years, Ugandan farmers grew far much less meals per discipline than they may have. Since 2012, at the least 56 Chinese agricultural specialists have travelled to Uganda to assist change that, by working within the fields alongside Ugandan farmers and native specialists.

They shared sensible strategies for rising rice, millet, sorghum and chilli, and for elevating livestock and farming fish. The outcomes had been massive. In one space, rice manufacturing per hectare quadrupled. In others, cows went from producing 2 litres of milk a day to 7. 

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set the partnership up and ran it, matching Uganda’s request with Chinese experience, offering technical backing and supervising the work because it went. 

The closing part closed in April 2026, having reached greater than 100,000 farmers.

But probably the most placing half is not a farming quantity. For that final part, Uganda co-funded the enterprise and contributed $1.6 million alongside $3 million from China. Uganda did not simply settle for an answer. It paid to maintain it.

Honduras and India: Water-Testing Methods 

Gracias a Dios, in japanese Honduras, is among the hardest locations in Central America to succeed in. There are not any roads in. You arrive by small aircraft or by river. For the Miskito communities who stay there, clear water and secure sanitation have all the time been tough to return by. Many residents had no bathroom and had been practising open defecation, and practically half had no entry to secure consuming water.

India has spent years fixing the identical drawback in its personal villages: low cost methods to deal with water, testing that does not want a laboratory, and villagers skilled to observe high quality themselves. Those strategies are what arrived in La Mosquitia, carried there by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and reworked for Miskito communities.

Health staff had been skilled in water remedy and testing, hygiene supplies had been translated into the Miskito language and 185 native volunteers now go to households to assist households hold the brand new practices going.

The UN’s position runs by two places of work. The UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) manages the funding, which comes from the Government of India. UNICEF Honduras leads the work on the bottom, alongside the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the municipality and native Indigenous councils.

By early 2026, 12,199 individuals had been reached with hygiene and water coaching. 

How are Countries Building South-South Cooperation Into Their Systems?

In a rising variety of international locations, South-South cooperation is turning into much less advert hoc and extra institutionalised, with UN Country Teams serving to flip exchanges of data and experience right into a sustained a part of nationwide cooperation frameworks.

Brazil: Brazil presents instance of what this seems like in follow. In 2025, the UN Country Team supported 12 South-South and triangular cooperation initiatives involving 25 international locations and $7 million in executed assets. Eighteen African international locations and 6 Latin American international locations took half, whereas Colombia and Peru accounted for the biggest variety of initiatives. Five extra initiatives operated at regional degree in Latin America and the Southern Cone.

Last 12 months, the World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil strengthened its position as a world reference on college feeding, meals safety and South-South cooperation. The Centre supported the 2nd Global Summit of the School Meals Coalition, held in northeast Brazil, bringing collectively Government authorities from round 80 international locations. It additionally expanded technical cooperation with international locations throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America by missions, examine visits and capability constructing on vitamin and household farming. In addition, social applied sciences to strengthen college feeding programmes had been carried out in Benin, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Republic of the Congo.

Indonesia: Indonesia is taking a extra explicitly institutional method to South-South and triangular cooperation. In 2025, the UN Country Team developed a South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) technique to assist the Government’s forthcoming Grand Design on International Development Cooperation and to formalise partnerships, notably with Indonesia AID. Since 2021, the UN has supported 75 South-South and triangular cooperation initiatives involving 18 UN businesses, utilizing Indonesia’s growth expertise and the UN’s international networks to reply to rising demand for Indonesian experience and place the nation as a stronger regional and international accomplice on the Sustainable Development Goals.

How Does the UN Help Make South-South Cooperation Happen?

Behind many of those exchanges is a coordination effort that’s straightforward to overlook. Through UN Country Teams and Resident Coordinators, the UN helps international locations establish related experience, join with the suitable companions and adapt confirmed options to their very own contexts, making it simpler for profitable concepts to journey.