February 2018 - The Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China and IFAD share a common development goal - to alleviate rural poverty and hunger and unleash the capacities of poor rural people by investing in smallholder agriculture.

One way they work together to reach that common goal is through South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC), an approach to exchanging resources, technology and knowledge between developing countries. The scale of which has increased greatly over the last few years.  

To further strengthen IFAD's engagement in SSTC, China made a financial contribution of US$5 million in 2016. An additional US$10 million contribution was finalized in February 2018 and will be used to finance a new IFAD/China SSTC Facility, with the overarching goal of exchanging and mobilizing knowledge, expertise and resources from the Global South to accelerate rural poverty alleviation, enhance rural productivity, advance rural transformation and promote investments between developing countries.

The Facility will be devoted exclusively to smallholder agriculture and rural development, with specific attention to poverty reduction, fighting malnutrition and promoting rural youth employment in developing countries. It will build on the comparative advantage of IFAD in providing concessional loans and grants exclusively devoted to smallholder agriculture and rural development in all regions.

"For IFAD, SSTC is a priority and a key development instrument for promoting sustainable and inclusive rural transformation. The new SSTC Facility is one important milestone in the long-standing partnership between IFAD and China, which has yielded many results over the last decades. Moving forward, the Facility will be critical to broaden the scope of our current SSTC approach, which will include, among other things, further positioning SSTC as an integral component of IFAD's business model to enhance development effectiveness and global prosperity,"  Ashwani Muthoo, Director of the Global Engagement, Knowledge and Strategy Division.