India

Indo-German sustainable development partnership has spread over seven decades. India is a staunch supporter of South-South cooperation and has for decades assisted especially Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in their sustainable development initiatives. Germany, on the other hand, has world-wide experience in development cooperation. Both India and Germany merge their respective experience to jointly implement sustainable development initiatives in third countries of the Global South, which may tremendously benefit from it.

India is a pioneer of triangular cooperation (TrC) with first projects dating back to India’s independence in 1947. Over the past decade, TrC has gathered momentum at the global level and India has been a champion of this. The OECD working paper 89 on ‘Triangular cooperation with India’ states: “A specific Indian model of triangular co-operation is emerging through which India and its partners aim to leverage domestic development innovations and the strengths of India’s diverse landscape of civil society organisations by scaling up bilateral co-operation and partnerships via triangular initiatives. Especially in African and neighbouring Asian countries there is a high demand to learn from Indian innovations and expertise, as they are considered to be easier to adapt to the local contexts.”

India’s Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (under Ministry of Economic Affairs) has extended capacity building to 158 countries, innovations in health have catalysed provision of affordable vaccines and pharmaceuticals, its successful experience with the digital economy and renewables has presented solutions that can be adapted globally.