Section title Programa de Cooperación Triangular para América Latina y El Caribe

What is the Triangular Cooperation Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean?

Triangular cooperation is of special importance for the creation of strategic partnerships and horizontal cooperation. Spanish Cooperation has long supported this modality of cooperation in Latin America, and it will seek to increase its capacity to boost inclusive and sustainable development, harnessing its great potential for dialogue and collaboration across this region (and others), based on a horizontal perspective and shared challenges.

To achieve this, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has designed the Triangular Cooperation Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean following an approach based on reflection and the identification of areas for improvement in this modality that seeks to offer support and innovation. This programme is essentially understood as a way to establish partnerships within the framework of a modality which favours mutual benefit, responsibility and learning.

The purpose of this programme is to boost triangular cooperation in the Latin American region as a modality for achieving the SDGs, and to direct it towards a more advanced model. This model will have a more innovative workflow based on transformative processes and elements, keeping in step with the region's current needs and challenges.

It is based on the public innovation methodology used in the framework of the INTERCOONECTA Knowledge and Innovation Programme for the development of Latin America and the Caribbean, adapted to the programme’s needs and to the modality.

The programme will benefit from the added value of Spanish Cooperation’s Training Centres, which specialize in knowledge transfer, exchange and management, as well as from the added value of the Spanish Cooperation Office for the Southern Cone, where knowledge is created and different knowledge-intensive programmes converge.

What do we do within the programme?

The programme has two components:

1) 1) The first focuses on supporting cooperation activities carried out by a partner country with one or more developing countries. Spanish Cooperation provides technical, financial, material and other resources, under principles of horizontality, mutual benefit and mutual accountability, mutual learning and knowledge management, development results-oriented shared management, efficiency and effectiveness, all of which characterize this modality of cooperation.

2) 2) The second is a cross-cutting component, aimed at fostering progress in the modality and generating a space for knowledge and dialogue around it.

How do we do it?

Triangular cooperation actions take the form of projects seeking solutions to specific challenges, through the creation of partnerships and the adoption of a demand-based approach, aimed at achieving SDGs.

Based on the experience gained through INTERCOONECTA, a simplified and adapted methodology was designed for this modality and for the programme. This led to the publication of the Methodological guide for the Triangular Cooperation Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean as a tool to assist application.

The proposals, jointly identified by two of Spanish Cooperation’s partner countries, at least one of which must be in Latin America, will be submitted through partner countries' cooperation agencies or directorates. In order to encourage the participation of different stakeholders at different levels, partnerships may include public institutions at any administrative level, as well as organizations from academia, civil society or the private sector. In addition, participation of Spanish partners that can share their experiences will be encouraged.

The proposals selected will complete a process of co-creation in which, through dialogue between the parties, the project design and details will be further honed. By the end of this stage, the following will have been decided:

what will be done: (projects aimed at practical training, collaborative training, knowledge building, conceiving projects, creating networks, conducting trials, or a combination thereof);
how it will be done: (activity design, selection of tools, inclusion of institutions, definition of the roles to be played by each institution, detection of other roles required);
and what end products it will aim to generate.

This line of funding for triangular cooperation will be combined with the programme activities to be carried out as part of the cross-cutting component, aimed at boosting and improving the modality and the programme itself, advancing towards a better model for relationships between partners. To this effect, programme partners and other stakeholders related to the modality will take part.

Other funds for triangular cooperation

This new Triangular Cooperation Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean does not mean work will cease on other programmes such as the Ibero-American Programme for the Strengthening of South-South Cooperation nor on instruments such as mixed funds or European funds. Nevertheless, insofar as possible, integration of these other actions into the methodology of the programme will be sought.

Links of interest

Information updated on: 28/02/2025

LINKS OF INTEREST

Fondo de Cooperación para Agua y Saneamiento

AECID en el exterior

Cooperación Multilateral

RSS

Coordinadora de ONGD

See more sites of interest