The establishment of the South African Development Partnership Agency: Institutional complexities and political exigencies

Abstract

Since 2007 there has been discussion to formalise, rationalise, coordinate and provide structure to South Africa's development cooperation through the establishment of a centralised South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA). Progress in rolling out the new institution, however, has been extremely slow, owing to the political and technical complexities of South Africa's institutional environment. This paper elaborates on the rationale and driving forces which have led to the establishment of SADPA and the steps which have been taken to gradually operationalise the new agency and the partnership fund dedicated to providing development support on the continent. As plans move forward, will SADPA be expected to manage all of South Africa's development cooperation -bilateral, multilateral, regional, trilateral -as well as concessional loans, humanitarian aid and development financing, public and private? Clarity of roles and coordination is critical. The paper will examine the different mechanisms for the financing, implementation and oversight that need to be in place to take forward Pretoria's development cooperation, and the challenges of leadership, coordination, accountability and information management that face the new agency.

Brazilian Perspectives on Policy Transfer and South-South Cooperation

“…Secondly, IR studies on SSC have focused on how developing countries, particularly regional and rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa or Turkey, may use aid/cooperation as a foreign policy agenda (Almeida and Kraychete 2013;Bacik and Afacan 2013;Besharati 2013;Prado Lallande 2013). Several scholars stressed how southern powers integrate multilateral agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organisation, as key partners in their respective SSC foreign policy strategies (Abdenur 2014;Beghin 2014;Milhorance and Soulé-Kohndou 2017).…”

Contested norms in fragmented institutions: Gender equality in South Africa’s development cooperation

“…The original idea with the aRF was to have a flexible foreign policy tool, and the ad hoc decision-making structure was necessary in order to respond to the needs and wishes of the different presidents pursuing different foreign and sometimes personal political interests (interview in DIRCO, Pretoria, april 2015). However, in aRF, the absence of a project management office and an explicit methodology for identifying and running projects made decision-making and the criteria for funding highly opaque, which in turn has hampered the effective disbursement of funds (Besharati, 2013;Brooks, 2014;grobbelaar and Chen, 2014;O'Riordan and Lucey, 2014;Sidiropoulos, 2012;Vickers, 2013). The aRF is replenished annually by a parliamentary allocation.…”

“…SaDPa was aimed at broadening the scope of the existing aRF by assembling a broad range of development assistance mechanismsincluding, for instance, trilateral aid and South-South Cooperation-in ways that were more aligned with the activities of other donors in the field (Besharati, 2013;Casoo, 2012). This would have resolved some of the issues of fragmentation and the absence of coordination in relation to outgoing development assistance.…”

“…South africa has the ambition of becoming one of the most influential development actors on the african continent (Besharati, 2013;Sidiropoulos, 2012). To pursue this ambition, South africa draws upon its double identity as both a recipient country with its own development history and a provider of development assistance (grobbelaar and Chen, 2014).…”

China and the BRICS Development Bank: Legitimacy and Multilateralism in South-South Cooperation

“…Despite relying on a more restricted budget than fellow BRICS states, the South African government has worked to formalise and coordinate the country's cooperation through the creation of the South African International Development Agency (SAIDA), later renamed the South African Development Partnership Agency (SAPDA). There is some concern that South African firms operating elsewhere in Africa will suffer with increasing competition from other cooperation providers, including the other BRICS (Besharati 2013). On the other hand, the BDB would allow South Africa to strengthen its position as a gateway to African development.…”