New SAIIA Research Report: SADPA, Strategic Aid or Development Packages for Africa?

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The development landscape today has evolved significantly since the turn of the century, when the global community joined forces to commit to the Millennium Development Goals.

Traditional donors have been joined by a range of other actors, including emerging economies – formerly the receivers, but increasingly the providers of development assistance. One such emerging economy providing development assistance is South Africa.

A new SAIIA report, South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA): Strategic Aid or Development Packages for Africa?, explores South Africa’s past, present and future development assistance to the rest of the continent.

It unpacks South Africa’s development partnership paradigm and the tensions that lie within its various global engagements, its approach to incoming aid and outgoing South–South co-operation. It explores the economic and political drivers and the internal and external forces that affect Pretoria’s international development policy, and the comparative advantage that South Africa possesses as a development partner in Africa. The report explains the rationale for the establishment of the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA), its various stages of evolution, and the institutional challenges that are currently present in the co-ordination of diverse domestic stakeholders engaged in development activities throughout Africa. It provides insight into the envisioned functions of SADPA, its potential financing, implementation and oversight mechanisms. It concludes with an analysis of the effectiveness and quality of South Africa’s development co-operation with the continent, and recommendations for the future of SADPA’s operations. The report is the result of extensive interviews with numerous local and international stakeholders and review of the existing literature from various South African authors.

Click here to download South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA): Strategic Aid or Development Packages for Africa?