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The world is reeling under multiple crises, and global economic prospects are grim. According to the World Bank’s projections, growth in 2024 and 2025 will be slower than in the decade before COVID-19 due to sluggish trade and investments[1]. Much of the developing world is mired in debt, with nearly 52 percent of low-income countries facing debt distress or high risk of debt distress[2]. Five years before the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deadline, the world is experiencing a reversal of many of the hard-won development gains of previous years. Climate risks are expanding, and developing countries—the least responsible for the climate crisis—are the most severely impacted. Additionally, geopolitical rivalries and conflicts within and between nations are exacerbating economic instability and undermining collective efforts to address climate change and attain the SDGs.
Triangular cooperation, a development modality in place since the 1970s, offers many advantages in today’s fractured, conflicted, and unsustainable world. Given the complex crisis that the world is currently facing, expanding partnerships beyond existing alliances and adopting new approaches to development diplomacy to harness resources and know-how from all partners is the need of the hour. A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Islamic Development Bank stresses that triangular partnerships can effectively win influence with key strategic partners in a divided and conflicted world[3]. Further, triangular cooperation is a powerful platform for technical diplomacy as it allows many state and non-state actors across countries to collaborate to create innovative development solutions[4].
Triangular cooperation refers to projects and initiatives combining the comparative advantages of traditional donors and southern countries to share knowledge and address development concerns in developing countries[5]. As per the OECD definition, triangular cooperation involves three actors:
- Beneficiary partner/recipient country: a developing country that seeks support to address a particular development problem.
- Pivotal partner: a developing country or developing country institution with proven experience in the concerned area that will share its knowledge, expertise, and resources to address the problem.
- Facilitating partner: a developed country or international agency providing technical and financial support to collaborate between the beneficiary and pivotal partners.
Triangular partnerships have witnessed a revival in recent years for two reasons. Firstly, the Western charity-based development aid model, with strict hierarchies between donors and recipients, was completely discredited by the early 2000s while the chorus for reform grew louder. Secondly, emerging donors like China, India, and Brazil expanded their development cooperation programmes and approaches based on equal partnership and mutual benefit, finding favour with many recipient countries. The West was losing leverage in the developing world and was concerned about the rise of China, which had the largest development cooperation budget and was also increasingly viewed as a threat by the West. As such, partnering with other countries like India became imperative for many Western countries.
Triangular cooperation has several advantages: (i) it combines the best features of North-South and South-South cooperation, (ii) it contributes to the SDGs, (iii) it enables more efficient development delivery through resource pooling, co-creation, and the best available technology, (iv) it strengthens relations between the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors and southern development actors, and (v) it builds the capacity of developing countries as providers of development cooperation[6]. However, delivering development through triangular cooperation is often fraught with challenges, and there are many drawbacks: administrative costs and transaction costs are high, the success rate is low, the scale and scope of the projects are limited, there are significant delays in implementation, and partner countries often differ over procurement rules, financial structure, and legal framework[7]. Moreover, recipient countries often hesitate to participate in triangular partnerships[8].
Although data on triangular cooperation are not easily accessible, OECD estimates suggest that between 2000 and 2022, 199 countries and territories and 85 international and regional organisations engaged in over 1,000 triangular cooperation projects[9]. About 68 percent of these projects were below US$1 million in value, providing low-cost, flexible development solutions, and about 47 percent of the projects have a two- to four-year lifespan[10]. Nearly 46 percent of the triangular projects globally involve a non-state actor[11].
India ranks eighth among the top ten countries involved in triangular partnerships[12]. In 1957, it participated in a triangular road construction project with the US and Nepal, its first such engagement[13]. However, in the subsequent years, it focused on shaping its development cooperation strategy based on third-world solidarity, respect for sovereignty, demand-driven development, and mutual benefit. India was also a vocal critic of the DAC donors’ approach to development aid, which made recipient countries more dependent on the developed world. Over the years, India’s disinclination towards partnering with Western countries diminished as it established its credentials as a development actor, and the negative perceptions of China grew stronger[14]. Since 2014, India has signed several agreements on triangular partnerships with the US, UK, Japan, and many other countries.
This volume, comprising nine essays, explores India’s experience as a partner in the triangular format with leading international development actors, including the United Nations (UN). The first essay by Shailly Kedia focuses on India’s triangular partnerships with the UN, India’s oldest and most trusted partner. She asserts that India’s triangular partnership with the UN is emblematic of the country’s larger goal of supporting the countries of the Global South. However, the scale of such projects is relatively small; as such, this modality is best suited for smaller developing countries. In the next essay, Shreya Upadhyay and Vivek Mishra list several successful triangular development initiatives between India and the US, particularly those involving Indian civil society organisations. However, they also find key differences between Indian and US motives and capacities. Therefore, the success of India-US triangular cooperation efforts will be determined by how well India balances its relationship with other developing countries while maintaining close ties with the US.
Next, Swati Prabhu discusses India’s engagement with the UK under the triangular partnership model and its challenges and prospects. Pratnashree Basu and Raka Barman focus on India’s triangular partnerships with Japan through four case studies: Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Africa. The authors argue that India and Japan are united by a shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, and third countries largely welcome India-Japan partnerships, particularly in the infrastructure sector. However, there are significant challenges due to political instability in partner countries and differing diplomatic stances between Japan and India.
In her essay, Ankita Dutta asserts that the India-European Union triangular partnership has not yet reached its potential and argues for enhanced cooperation in third countries, notably in Africa. Next, Alisée Pornet notes that triangular development cooperation is a valuable development modality for India and France to achieve the SDGs by using complementary strengths, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, a region extremely vulnerable to climate change and of common interest to both countries. She focuses on three key examples of triangular development cooperation between the two countries: the Indo-Pacific Triangular Cooperation Fund, Indo-Pacific Park Partnerships, and Sustainable Finance in the Indo-Pacific.
Similarly, Kate Clayton and Ambika Vishwanath emphasise the role of cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, which is both extremely climate-vulnerable and highly contested. They argue for closer cooperation in clean energy and infrastructure, disaster response, and water security.
The final two essays focus on India’s triangular partnerships in the infrastructure and health sectors, two prominent areas of partnership. Gurjit Singh observes that China’s growing footprint, particularly in the infrastructure sector in Africa, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the South Pacific, has made it imperative for the G7 countries to engage with India, a democratic country with shared values. However, triangular partnerships in infrastructure are not smooth processes. Singh outlines several recommendations for successful triangular partnerships: greater flexibility, a hybrid financing system, coordination in procurement processes, and guarantees to mitigate risks. The last essay by Lakshmy Ramakrishnan concentrates on India’s triangular partnerships in the health sector. She highlights India’s successful triangular partnerships with specialised UN agencies in health, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and states that global health challenges require sustained multidimensional collaborative approaches. Ramakrishnan recommends systematically monitoring and evaluating health projects steered by India to enhance the health sector in developing economies.
Triangular partnerships cannot replace other forms of development cooperation, such as South-South or bilateral cooperation. However, it can be an important link between developed countries, international agencies, and southern countries and help harness the best resources, knowledge, and technology for sustainable development. I hope this collection will generate discussions on the efficacy of triangular partnerships as a development modality, particularly for developing countries like India, encourage partnerships between countries in achieving the SDGs, and enable an environment for triangular development to mature to a level where project sizes are large and delays are few.
Endnotes
[1] World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, January 2024, Washington, DC, World Bank Group, 2024.
[3] OECD/IsDB, Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation, Paris, OECD, 2023.
[4] “Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation”
[5] Sebastian Paulo, “India as a Partner in Triangular Development Cooperation: Prospects for the India-UK Partnership for Global Development”, ORF Working Paper, March 2018.
[6] Malancha Chakrabarty and Swati Prabhu, “Combining the Best of North-South and South-South Development Cooperation: The Case of Triangular Partnerships”, ORF Occasional Paper 396, March 2023.
[7] Chakrabarty and Prabhu, “Combining the Best of North-South and South-South Development Cooperation: The Case of Triangular Partnerships”
[8] Chakrabarty and Prabhu, “Combining the Best of North-South and South-South Development Cooperation: The Case of Triangular Partnerships”
[9] “Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation”
[10] “Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation”
[11] “Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation”
[12] “Global Perspectives on Triangular Co-operation”
[13] Sachin Chaturvedi and Nadine Piefer-Soyler, ‘Triangular Co-operation with India: Working with Civil Society Organisations’, OECD Development Cooperation Working Paper 89, January 2021.
[14] Paulo, “India as a Partner in Triangular Development Cooperation”
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Dr Malancha Chakrabarty is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director (Research) at the Observer Research Foundation where she coordinates the research centre Centre for New Economic ...
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