Public-public development cooperation
This report (PDF) by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency explores the potential added value of public-public cooperation between Dutch sub-national actors and their Sub-Saharan African counterparts. Over the past years, development cooperation policy in the Netherlands has become increasingly oriented towards facilitating private sector development and public-private partnerships (PPPs). As opposed to PPPs, decentralized public development cooperation has received relatively little attention. The rationale behind decentralized public development cooperation is that public goals are best achieved by public institutions. Overall, the main motivation for Dutch sub-national public actors to engage in development cooperation is to share knowledge and contribute to capacity building to strengthen public institutions in the global South. In general, however, there seems to be a discrepancy between the motivations and the practices as they actually occur. Although the general intention of Dutch sub-national public actors is to develop long-standing partnerships based on equality and reciprocity, this is in many cases not realized in practice. The potential added value of decentralized public development cooperation in contributing to food security lies in long-term, mutually beneficent cooperation based on an integrated approach to the governance of public goods. In order to realize this potential, decentralized public development cooperation should be adapted to its context and aimed at enhancing integrated governance, thus stimulating synergies between public goods such as land, water and food security.