ABSTRACT
South–South cooperation (SSC), defined as ‘the processes, institutions and arrangements designed to promote political, economic and technical cooperation among developing countries in pursuit of common development goals’ (UNCTAD, 2010), was put on the international agenda with the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Group of 77 (G77) in 1964. The rhetoric of SSC, however, was lost for several decades thereafter, as it did not yield the sort of economic self-reliance and political independence that developing countries had sought. It was not until the 1990s (Hamidin, 2003) that SSC regained some renewed interest. In the Asia–Africa context, the hallmark of SSC, inter-regional links, began with Japanese aid to Africa in 1993, and subsequently the rise of new donors and/or actors from other parts of Asia, China, India, and including Malaysia.
