South-South cooperation for Africa’s next horizon

South-South cooperation provides a practical lever for transformation in Africa and for advancing shared prosperity with Latin America and the Caribbean. To realise this potential, collaborators need to move beyond high-level agreements and embed action in local systems. Communities and the African diaspora contribute agency and expertise, serving as conduits for innovation and resilience.

Recent dialogues at the UN General Assembly underscored a familiar reality: intergovernmental agreements only serve as the entry point. Cooperation achieves progress when stakeholders anchor efforts in local delivery systems and translate ambition into measurable outcomes.

Shared histories of resilience and converging structural challenges, such as persistent inequality, climate risk, and the need for inclusive growth, underpin Africa’s partnerships with Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, when partners transfer solutions without adapting them to local contexts, they risk undermining the very impact they aim to achieve.

A new generation of cooperation should look forward while grounding itself in local capacity, cultural context, and the creative assets already present within communities.

Lessons in implementation

Latin America offers a wealth of experience in translating national policy into local success—and in learning from what doesn’t work. Take Mozambique’s ProSAVANA project, which leaders designed to apply Brazil’s Cerrado expertise to African soil. The idea was bold, but without a full understanding of local farming conditions, the programme struggled to gain traction. Similarly, Brazil’s Proinfância childcare initiative encountered setbacks when national ambitions exceeded what local governments could realistically deliver. These cases illustrate a consistent lesson: implementation falters when policy design disconnects from the operational realities of local delivery.

Yet, Latin America also provides strong examples of how alignment can create lasting impact. Brazil’s Bolsa Família and Family Health Strategy programs show that national priorities thrive when local governments have clear roles and resources. These initiatives succeeded not through central control, but because local actors—municipal offices, health clinics, and community networks—owned the process and made it relevant to people.

Communities realise progress not in conference halls, but in practical settings where policy meets lived experience: town halls, classrooms, and fields.

Local leadership and bottom-up innovation

Africa, too, has a long history of grounding cooperation in local action. Mozambique’s UNAC farmers’ movement helped shape national agricultural strategies by ensuring that farmer voices inform decision-making. Urban centers such as Kampala and Kigali pioneer local innovation—whether through digital tax systems or social protection programs that reach those most in need. These examples show that African communities possess the institutional and social capital needed for effective, bottom-up transformation.

At this intersection, South-South cooperation shifts from transactional exchange to mutual learning. Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean can jointly pilot, iterate, and adapt solutions, focusing on co-creation that aligns with local realities and delivers scalable results.

A living bridge of knowledge and practice

The African diaspora across Latin America and the Caribbean—an estimated 133 million people—represents one of the most powerful yet underutilised forces in global development. Bound by shared ancestry, history, and culture, this diaspora acts as a living bridge for ideas, investment, and innovation.

In Brazil, Afro-descendant communities, particularly the quilombola farmers, continue centuries-old ecological farming practices rooted in African knowledge and adapted to local ecosystems. These farmers not only preserve history; they shape the future. Through partnerships with African agricultural cooperatives, they co-develop strategies for climate resilience and sustainable food systems, sharing climate-smart techniques and resource management skills tailored to each context.

Beyond agriculture, diaspora-led initiatives in health, education, and financial inclusion connect innovation ecosystems in Latin America with African regions that have latent potential but face infrastructure gaps. Targeted support for these partnerships can unlock new channels for knowledge transfer, capacity building, and inclusive growth, linking communities across continents in practical collaboration.

Exploring new areas for cooperation

The scope for deeper cooperation between Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean is significant, with multiple entry points for immediate action.

City-to-city partnerships can expand learning in areas such as local finance, waste management, and urban planning. Community and diaspora collaborations can drive breakthroughs in health systems, education reform, sustainable agriculture, disaster risk reduction, financial access and creative industries. 

Joint work on infrastructure, critical minerals, renewable energy, and methane reduction can strengthen both regions’ positions in the global green economy. Locally designed social policies, bold experiments rooted in cultural context, can redefine what inclusive growth looks like.

When partners anchor their efforts in on-the-ground experience and local innovation, they move beyond advancing development goals to redefining the benchmarks for effective cooperation in a rapidly changing context.

Global momentum on South-South cooperation

Momentum for South-South cooperation is growing across global forums. For example, participants at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture 2025 highlighted the need to expand partnerships that connect agriculture, knowledge sharing, and community action across southern regions. The World Economic Forum underscored that today’s global growth increasingly depends on South-South and triangular cooperation, where collaboration replaces the outdated donor-recipient model. Meanwhile, UNESCO continues to emphasise the importance of connecting unversities, communities, and goverments to foster innovation and build lasting capacity.

Collectively, these dialogues reinforce a central insight: the strength of local systems to translate cooperation into measurable outcomes will determine the future of development.

A shared strategic imperative

Africa requires an estimated $194 billion annually to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while Latin America and the Caribbean face their own fiscal constraints. With limited resources, efficiency and impact matter more than ever.

South-South cooperation provides a practical pathway forward. Strategic investment in skills and systems at the point of service delivery enables governments and partners to increase policy effectiveness, strengthen accountability, and optimise resource allocation.

South-South cooperation should not become mere symbolism or replicate external models. Instead, it involves a process of co-creation, grounded in community-defined needs and reinforced by the connective capacity of diaspora networks.

Communiqués won’t define the future of cooperation, people will. Practical relationships and pilot initiatives across the Global South will drive this change: Capitals such as Brasília and Addis Ababa deepen regional ties; Salvador and Lagos connect shared Afro-Atlantic culture with modern innovation; Cartagena and Dakar strengthen coastal resilience; Dar es Salaam and Recife advance urban mobility and social inclusion; Mozambican farmers and Brazil’s quilombola communities co-develop sustainable agriculture; and Nigerian and Jamaican fishermen exchange traditional knowledge on marine conservation. Each collaboration can prove how shared experiences drive scalable solutions.

The next generation in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean will inherit both the opportunities and constraints of this century. Their creativity, technological fluency, and social awareness are strategic assets for regional cooperation. Structuring South-South partnerships to align with youth aspirations for employment, innovation, and agency will ensure that cooperation remains relevant and adaptive.

This is the moment to shift from declarations to grounded collaboration, strengthening the operational ties between African, Latin American, and Caribbean communities to convert shared potential into measurable progress. When partners ground their work in evidence, community priorities, and the connective capacity of the diaspora, they move beyond frameworks to become engines of resilience and equity.