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Paper short abstract

This paper examines South–South Cooperation in Africa as a diplomatic and developmental practice, asking whether it constitutes a break from Western aid or reproduces new hierarchies through debt, extraction, and strategic influence in a multipolar order.

Paper long abstract

This paper critically examines South–South Cooperation (SSC) in Africa as an emerging development paradigm within an increasingly multipolar global order. While SSC is commonly framed through discourses of non-interference and partnership, this paper asks whether it represents a substantive epistemic and structural departure from Western-led Official Development Assistance (ODA), or whether it reconfigures established hierarchies under new geopolitical arrangements.

Drawing on political economy and international relations scholarship that conceptualizes aid as an instrument of diplomacy, the paper analyzes SSC as a strategic practice embedded in state interests rather than a neutral development intervention. Focusing on African experiences, it explores how governments deploy strategies of multi-alignment to navigate intensifying competition among development partners, leverage bargaining power, and assert greater agency over development agendas. The paper also highlights how these engagements generate new forms of dependency, particularly through debt exposure, extractive investment regimes, and uneven technology transfer.

By juxtaposing the normative claims of SSC with its material outcomes, the paper interrogates the limits of “win-win” cooperation and questions the extent to which SSC alters the underlying power relations that historically shaped Africa’s development trajectories. Rather than treating multipolarity as inherently emancipatory, the paper demonstrates how it expands room for maneuver while deepening structural constraints.

In broader critiques of development as a framework of justice and transformation, the paper argues that the significance of South–South Cooperation lies less in its promise of alternative development and more in its exposure of the enduring tensions between agency, sovereignty, and external influence in Africa’s political economy.

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Paper short abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa navigates an increasingly multipolar development landscape through the rapid expansion of digital infrastructure, which creates a critical arena where governance norms, state capacity, and development models are being redefined.

Paper long abstract

This study examines how digitalization influences governance outcomes and policy performance in African countries, and whether the diffusion of ICT contributes to more autonomous, effective, and accountable governance structures.

Using secondary data from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Governance Indicators (WGI), and the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), the study constructs a panel dataset for Sub-Saharan Africa (2002-2023). Digitalisation is captured through indicators such as internet penetration, mobile broadband subscriptions, and ICT access indices. Governance outcomes are measured through regulatory quality and control of corruption. Additionally, the study will present cases illustrating how the use of social media platforms, among others, is transforming the landscape of governance, accountability, and development in Africa.

The study asks: Does digitalisation strengthen governance and state capability, or does it generate new vulnerabilities and dependencies influenced by South–South cooperation? Employing a fixed-effects panel model, the paper assesses whether higher digital connectivity is associated with improvements in regulatory performance, anti-corruption capacity, and overall policy effectiveness. Explaining how the use of social media platforms is reshaping governance and accountability in many African countries.

By connecting digital transformation to contemporary debates on multipolarity and the reconfiguration of aid relationships, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how African states negotiate agency, sovereignty, and governance reform in an era of shifting geopolitical alignments. It highlights the opportunities and tensions inherent in reimagining development governance through a digital lens, extending beyond traditional aid frameworks.

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Using South Korea’s engagement with Africa (and Southeast Asia as contrast), this paper asks whether South–South Cooperation pluralises development or reconfigures hierarchy, showing how Korean SSC diversifies partners yet creates uneven development trajectories.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines whether South–South Cooperation (SSC) enables a more pluralistic, justice-oriented development order or instead reconfigures hierarchy under new forms of strategic influence through the case of South Korea’s engagement with Africa. SSC is widely promoted as a horizontal, solidarity-based alternative to Northern official development assistance, yet recent scholarship shows that it can also reproduce asymmetries of power, expertise and debt within a multipolar aid regime. South Korea is a pivotal “hybrid” actor: an OECD-DAC member with Northern-like economic and technological capacity, but a recent history as an aid recipient and a long-standing claim to Southern identity and shared developmental experience. This research conducted interviews with Korean officials and practitioners, policy and strategy documents, and sectoral and regional ODA profiles, triangulated with secondary literature on Korea's knowledge-sharing programmes and Saemaul Undong–branded cooperation. Focusing on Africa, and using Southeast Asia as a comparative reference point, it shows that Korean SSC pluralise the aid landscape by diversifying sources of finance and policy advice and by offering an alternative developmental reference through the Knowledge Sharing Programme and related model-export initiatives. Simultaneously, the analysis demonstrates that Korean SSC generates uneven development trajectories within the Global South. African partnerships are more frequently configured as sites for policy transfer, demonstration projects and the projection of Korean developmental narratives whereas more intensive production-network integration and digital/industrial upgrading are concentrated in Southeast Asia. The paper concludes that SSC “beyond aid” modifies rather than overturns the global aid architecture, redistributing influence while allocating unequal development possibilities across regions.

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Paper short abstract

The paper examines how Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia navigate shifting aid geopolitics through multi-alignment strategies in a multipolar world, asking whether South-South Cooperation fosters genuine East African agency or replace Western conditionality with new hierarchies of debt and dependencies.

Paper long abstract

The emergence of a multipolar global order has disrupted traditional hegemony of Western development finance, introducing a new era characterized by diverse sources of aid, investment and influence. The growing prominence of South-South Cooperation (SSC) led by China, India, and the Gulf States and emerging powers of the Global South has profoundly reshaping development landscape in East Africa. Governments in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia have actively leveraged these new partnerships to finance large-scale infrastructure, energy and industrial projects, seeking to diversify external partnerships and reduce dependence on conditionalities of Western aid.

This paper investigates how these three states navigate this shifting geopolitical landscape by leveraging multi-alignment strategies. Through comparative analysis of flagship projects – including Chinese-financed Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya, port and logistics development in Tanzania financed by Gulf States, and state-led industrialization and infrastructure financing in Ethiopia. While all three countries engaged in multi-alignment strategies, their distinct political economies shape divergent pathways. Kenya’s market-led approach has locked it into a debt-serving ‘infrastructure-for-extraction’ model, Tanzania similarly ties mega-projects to future mineral and gas extraction, while Ethiopia’s aggressive borrowing for industrial projects led to sovereign debt distress. The paper argues that while these East African states have successfully used multipolar alignment to expand their policy space, they remain entangled in a reconfigured hierarch that complicated the path towards a truly justice-oriented development. The experiences of these states underscore both the opportunities and the challenges inherent in navigating a rapidly changing landscape of global development and aid paradigm.