€1 Million Fund to Promote Cooperation between Latin America and Africa

The Portugal-Latin America-Africa Triangular Cooperation Fund is an initiative of the Portuguese Government, which finances it, and has an initial allocation of one million euros, to implement projects until the end of 2025.

“This amount is just the beginning, a starting point. Our expectation is that this process will be a success story and that we can be just today witnessing the birth of a fund that is much stronger and has another financial dimension in the future,” said Francisco André, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

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The Portuguese leader was speaking in Madrid, at the headquarters of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib), where the protocol to formalize the initiative was signed.

Segib Secretary General Andrés Allamand also said he hoped the first projects financed by the fund would be a success and the initiative would become permanent.

“The objective is very, very important. Triangular cooperation is a key word to strategically bring Latin America and Africa closer together and Portugal’s role in this matter is absolutely key and decisive”, said Andrés Allamand.

The fund will be managed by Segib and a call for project applications is expected to open by the end of this year. Public and private entities may apply and the intention is that the first projects will be implemented by the end of 2025.

“This fund will support cooperation projects and initiatives focused on the development of strategic capacities and the exchange of experiences between Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP) and Ibero-American countries”, says a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The fund will be able to finance initiatives within the “traditional areas of Portuguese cooperation” related to human development (education, health, youth, gender equality), “and where Segib has a long history of success in triangular cooperation”, but also new areas, which are currently at the center of African countries’ concerns and in which Latin America has “great added value”, namely energy and food security, said Francisco André.

Segib’s Secretary General stressed that in these two areas Latin America “has many contributions to make to the African continent” and said that although the range of cooperation is wide, there may be “a focus” on energy and food security.

Francisco André said that Portugal, as a country “builder of dialogues and bridges”, intends in this case “to bring regions closer” and “to work for what is most important today, to build and strengthen multilateralism, the only way to respond to the great challenges” today.

The creation of this fund was announced by Prime Minister António Costa in March at the 28th Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

On that day, António Costa welcomed the accession as an observer of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) to the Ibero-American community, which he considered “a very important step”, and noted that the Ibero-American community was already an observer “in the CPLP space”.

“And together we can do more. And that is why Portugal has taken the initiative to set up a fund for cooperation between the Ibero-American summit and the CPLP, which we have already started with one million euros, in order to strengthen cooperation between these two organizations “, he added.

“We must take advantage of the synergies that this Ibero-American world can establish,” he said.

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(Featured image by Luis Feliciano via Unsplash)

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First published in Africa 21 Digital, a third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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