This research has shown that TDC is not only a modality aimed at supporting capacity development and technology transfer in the beneficiary country, but is also about strategic partnerships that can help both the beneficiary and its development cooperation providers to secure their institutional, national and global interests. At the institutional scale, development practitioners are committed to ensuring that development interventions in TDC are efficiently delivered in the beneficiary country. At the national/global scale, senior policymakers and politicians view TDC as a vehicle for controlling the movement of development knowledge, gaining soft power influence, accessing commercial opportunities and enhancing economic growth. This raises the question, then as to whether this a sign of the death of development or a sign that TDC has always been driven more by political motivations rather than development effectiveness. As discussed in Chapter Two, the origins of TDC lie in efforts to strengthen the use of Southern knowledge during the 1990s when Northern institutions, practices and policies dominated the global development architecture. This is in contrast to SSC, which has always been a political tool for developing countries to address the socio-economic inequalities that come out of the colonial era and to assert their sovereignty in global governance structures. However, TDC has also become a space for observing how the traditional Northern powers and emerging Southern powers are competing for influence over the global economy, governance structures and the sources of knowledge production.
As previously discussed, Zambia’s interest in replicating East Asian models of industrial modernity in the ToH and RETT projects reflects the ongoing dewesternization of development thinking in the global South. The dewesternization of development cooperation, in particular, has raised concern amongst some Northern governments. Consequently, Northern countries such as Denmark are using TDC to convince beneficiary partners such as Zambia and Southern cooperation providers such as China, that Western political, economic, regulatory and epistemic values and standards are the best frameworks through which to deliver and receive development cooperation. However, TDC is also a space in which to observe how these countries
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control or block narratives from forming in order to build and or retain their soft power influence. As discussed in Chapter Two, the OECD-led international development community established the aid effectiveness principles (succeeded by development effectiveness) in 2005, to guide how development cooperation should be delivered (OECD 2011). China, India and Brazil initially rejected these principles and started to create their own standards. These Southern cooperation providers were labelled as ‘rogue predators’ (Naim 2007), but it was later recognised that they could change these narratives and their global image by collaborating and learning from Northern cooperation providers through TDC. Denmark’s proposal to collaborate with China in the RETT project also demonstrates how, within a decade, many Northern countries shifted from contesting Southern cooperation providers to embracing them. In this rapidly changing landscape, Japan has also distinguished itself from other development cooperation providers by strategically framing past bilateral development projects as TDC in its policy texts and framing itself as the all-weather friend that African countries can rely on to support horizontal and mutual learning. However, Japan’s underlying objective is to position itself as the leading facilitator of TDC and to maintain its influence in the global development architecture.
TDC is also a space in which to observe the hybrid nature of development planning. In this space, beneficiary countries can learn and emulate the experiences of other countries without coercion from their development providers, as was the case with neoliberalism through the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). At the same time, TDC enables Southern countries such as China and Malaysia to ingest and digest elements of OECD best practice and thereby improve the effectiveness of their development cooperation. Chapter Four has shown that China has institutionalised some of the lessons learnt from Denmark in the RETT project and established a South- South centre for renewable energy technology transfer that is currently promoting its model in developing countries such as Ethiopia. More effective Chinese development cooperation will help it to mitigate narratives of the Chinese threat in the African development landscape, build its network of allies, increase its soft power influence to contest the dominance of Northern countries over global governance structures, and possibly build a new world order based on its economic development model. Thus,
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China’s move to cement its economic development model as a preferred alternative for developing countries does not accord with the efforts to reform knowledge production. As Mignolo (2018) notes, these efforts encompass diverse social actors (including activists, academics and journalists) who are working to ensure a pluriversal world in which different political, economic and epistemic traditions are respected and co-exist.
Despite this, China’s influence in global development appears to be moving from strength to strength. China’s Belt and Road Forum and the United Nations BAPA+40 conference are considered two of the most significant South-South/trilateral development cooperation events to have taken place in 2019 (UNOSSC 2019). Remarkably, 36 heads of state prioritised attending the Belt and Road Forum in April 2019, one-third of whom were from Europe, when compared to the 6 heads of state that were present at the United Nations BAPA+40 conference a month earlier (Steiner 2019; Tiezzi 2019). Of course, China’s global power is not guaranteed to continue to rise. Abrupt changes in the domestic political and economic terrain threaten the stability of development programmes in countries that provide development cooperation, in the same way that they affect the beneficiary country. This can be seen from how the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2008–9 global financial crisis completely altered the scope and priorities of development cooperation programmes in most Northern countries. In addition, Brazil’s rise as one of the most influential providers of SSC and as a pivotal partner in TDC has successively declined with every change in leadership from Lula da Silva to current President Jair Bolsonaro (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). The Bolsonaro administration has even indicated that it would like Brazil to join the OECD and its plans have received the support of the United States government (Verdelio 2020). It is unclear if this signals the demise of SSC as a mechanism that promotes ‘the Bandung spirit of decolonization’ and the emergence of a multipolar world order in which the North-South division is no longer distinguished by geography or a common set of principles (for example, the principles of SSC versus aid effectiveness). Nevertheless, these changes have the potential to make it more difficult for beneficiary countries to secure their national interests by playing Northern and Southern development partners against each other.
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This does not automatically imply that beneficiary partners are simply vulnerable to the power that material wealth, political clout or development knowledge provides its development partners. This study has demonstrated that the beneficiary country can employ diverse and unexpected strategies to contest the influence of its development cooperation providers. It has also argued that the rise of the Southern cooperation providers has been key to strengthening Africa’s bargaining position in these changing geographies of power. However, the limitations I encountered when researching the RETT project indicate that China’s plans to use TDC to reform its image as a responsible global actor is also dependent on its African partners cooperating with its strategies, in this case blocking negative narratives on its economic and development cooperation activities. This suggests that scholarship on the decolonization of knowledge production needs to expand beyond the hegemonic nature of Western knowledge systems to the ways in which wealthy and influential Southern countries are suppressing knowledge that either falls outside their preferred frameworks or opposes their national interests. However, mutuality is an undisputable part of international relations. The legitimacy and power of all development cooperation providers is also dependent on their recognition and requests for support from Africa countries. This why Japan’s development discourse places emphasis on its role as Africa’s all-weather friend, and European countries have also recognised that their relations with Africa have to move beyond aid to trade, investments and capacity building. What remains to be seen is if African countries can ensure that South- South/trilateral development exchanges lead to effective development outcomes that stand the test of time, in spite of the complex politics of partnerships that constrains country ownership.