UNIDO Centre for South-South Industrial Cooperation

Moving Forward Together

The programme will map the potential within the South, to create best technological and managerial practices for enhancing productivity growth and to share these in mutually beneficial partnerships with countries from the South.

The South-South cooperation programme will focus on:

  • Technology Transfer, management and upgrading of skills
  • Investment promotion in industries
  • Information technology applications for industrial development and knowledge networking
  • Business linkages for Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) and cluster development
  • Micro enterprise and rural industry development
  • Building trade capacities and market linkages
  • Grassroots innovations and renewable energy sources
  • Commercialisation of research findings and skill development
  • Value-chain participation

In March 2006, a UNIDO team led by its Director-General discussed this project with the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry and several private sector institutions. After the visit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed India’s commitment to this project. In February 2007, the first UNIDO Centre for South-South Cooperation (UCSSIC) was formally launched in New Delhi.

South Assisting South

To enhance greater interaction between developing countries, the UNIDO Centre for South-South Industrial Cooperation will:

  • Exchange expertise and experience
  • Network institutions and enterprises
  • Replicate best practices to reduce poverty
  • Strengthen national and local innovation systems

Specifically, the Centre aims to:

  • Design practical and innovative projects to exploit new areas of technical competence and economic opportunity. The emphasis will be on launching projects in established fields as well as in new ones with social and economic development potential for LDCs;
  • Provide a platform to encourage closer cooperation in policy formulation among developing countries. The aim is to ensure that the less developed countries can benefit from the experience of successful strategies in the more developed ones. Benchmarking will be encouraged between the more developed economies of the South – India, China, South Africa and Brazil – so that through increased productivity their pace of development could be maintained and strengthened, enabling them to become engines of growth in their respective regions. For this, the Centre will network with the UNIDO International Technology Promotion Centres, the Investment and Technology Promotion Offices (ITPOs) and the Africa Investment Promotion Agency Network (AFRIPA-NET). The Centre will also coordinate its activities with UNIDO’s field offices all over the world;
  • Act as a catalyst to leverage various on-going projects of governments, as well as of UNIDO, where relevant, and channelize them into coherent initiatives, to enhance their effectiveness, and leverage their benefits to sharpen their South-South cooperation component.
 


    Enhancing Productivity Growth