Does South-South Cooperation Really Work? Some Evidences from Korea's Bilateral ODA Programs to Facilitate HRD in ICT in Bangladesh

While North-South cooperation (NSC) continues to play a considerably dominant role in international development cooperation efforts, there is growing criticisms across the world as to the role and effectiveness of the NSC to support the developing countries to meet their development needs. As such, South-South cooperation (SSC) has become a subject of discussion in recent years across the world in international development and has increasingly become popular as an effective aid modality. However, there is unavailability of sufficient empirical studies about the efficacy of the SSC in the context of Bangladesh. The present paper attempts to examine two KOICA's projects to facilitate HRD in ICT in Bangladesh taking into consideration of Korea as a southern country. The study revealed that Korea's bilateral development cooperation efforts have been effective so far to fulfill their objectives. The findings of the study put forward that SSC may work in the form of technical cooperation to support the developing countries, provided that technical cooperation is demand-driven, and that there is sufficient level of absorptive capacity and supportive policy as well on the part of developing partner country to utilize external skills and technology.