South-South Cooperation in Education

This chapter will chart the impact of South-South cooperative transfer on education in the Global South. With the conceptual lens of the “Third World” falling out of vogue, countries in the lower stages of economic development began to be collectively referred to as the Global South in response to their increasing role in world politics and emerging economies. The chapter reviews the emergence of South-South cooperation and its three modalities or phases (“self-reliance and political strengthening,” “demobilization,” and “best-practice transfer”). It also examines the role of South-South cooperation in education policy by looking at how triangular cooperation has affected education systems in the Global South. In the final section, we explore the impact of South-South educational transfer within the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This requires looking at Goal 4 (quality education) specifically to determine how that definition of ‘quality education’ may be a result of the transfer of policies.