Friday 11 / September / 2026
Development cooperation is changing. It is no longer defined only by financial assistance, infrastructure projects or government-to-government agreements. Increasingly, the real measure of partnership lies in whether knowledge travels, institutions become stronger, communities gain capabilities and successful development models can be adapted elsewhere.
India’s approach reflects this changing landscape. Over the past decade, its development partnership has increasingly combined government programmes, private-sector capabilities, civil society participation, academic expertise, technology and international institutions.
The result is a model that connects domestic development experience with South-South cooperation and positions people, rather than aid, at the centre of international engagement.
This whole-of-society approach is particularly visible in India’s work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), capacity building, digital transformation, healthcare, climate resilience and development financing. It is also becoming an important instrument of India’s engagement with the Global South.
Development cooperation built around partnership
India’s development partnership has evolved from conventional assistance towards a broad framework encompassing grants, concessional Lines of Credit, technical cooperation, capacity building, humanitarian assistance and knowledge sharing.
The Ministry of External Affairs describes the approach as human-centric, with emphasis on respect for diversity, sustainable development and the priorities of partner countries.
The scale of this engagement has expanded considerably.
According to a 2025 UNDP study, between 2000 and 2023 India extended more than US$14.7 billion in grants and US$32 billion in concessional Lines of Credit, supporting more than 600 development projects across 68 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific.
The projects span sectors ranging from transport, power and agriculture to healthcare, education, information technology and disaster management. India’s Lines of Credit alone cover around 600 projects across 68 countries, according to the MEA.
African countries have been a major beneficiary, with 196 Lines of Credit worth approximately US$12 billion extended to 42 African nations.
The emphasis, however, is not limited to physical infrastructure. Capacity building has become one of the defining pillars of India’s development cooperation.
From transferring resources to transferring capabilities
The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, established in 1964, has become one of the country’s longest-running platforms for South-South cooperation.
It covers more than 160 partner countries and provides training, study tours, expert deputations and institutional partnerships across areas including agriculture, education, energy, healthcare, governance, entrepreneurship, environmental management and technology.
This model creates a different kind of development relationship. Rather than simply transferring a finished solution, it enables professionals and institutions to acquire knowledge that can subsequently be adapted to domestic circumstances.
That principle is increasingly relevant as developing countries seek affordable and scalable solutions in areas such as digital governance, healthcare delivery, financial inclusion and climate resilience. India’s own experience of deploying these systems at population scale provides a substantial pool of practical knowledge for such exchanges.
The MEA has described capacity building as a core element of India’s development partnership, with initiatives covering digital transformation, good governance, education, financial inclusion, healthcare delivery and other people-centred priorities.
Making the SDGs a national and social mission
India’s whole-of-society approach is particularly visible in its implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
NITI Aayog has served as the principal institutional anchor for SDG coordination, while the SDG India Index has created a framework for measuring progress across states and Union Territories.
India’s second Voluntary National Review, presented at the UN High-Level Political Forum in 2020, explicitly described a shift towards a whole-of-society approach involving subnational governments, local authorities, civil society organisations, communities, vulnerable groups and the private sector.
This approach has since become more deeply embedded in development planning. The UN Development Programme noted in 2025 that India had used the SDG India Index and National Indicator Framework to make development data more comparable and locally relevant.
More than 250,000 Gram Panchayats have begun incorporating SDG priorities into local development plans through the Panchayat Advancement Index, while more than a dozen states have established dedicated SDG Coordination and Acceleration Centres.
The participation of civil society and other non-governmental actors has also expanded. UNDP reported that more than 1,000 civil society organisations participated in nationwide consultations associated with India’s Voluntary National Reviews.
This illustrates how the SDGs have moved beyond being an international framework into a broader domestic development process.
Partnerships that connect domestic success with global development
India’s development cooperation increasingly operates through partnerships rather than isolated initiatives.
The Government of India-UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for 2023-2027 was developed with participation from central ministries, states and Union Territories, alongside civil society, think tanks, the private sector, cooperatives and labour organisations.
It reflects a whole-of-government, whole-of-society and whole-of-UN framework.
The partnership also provides a channel through which Indian development experiences can be taken to other countries.
In August 2025, India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the United Nations launched the India-UN Global Capacity-Building Initiative to connect Indian development practices and institutions with countries of the Global South according to their national priorities.
The initiative includes skills training, knowledge exchanges and pilot projects, drawing on both the ITEC programme and the UN India SDG Country Fund.
This is a significant evolution in South-South cooperation: Indian experience is not simply being showcased internationally but adapted through partnerships to meet the specific requirements of other developing countries.
Digital, health and climate solutions widen the partnership
Technology has emerged as another important dimension of India’s international development cooperation. Digital public infrastructure, digital health systems and technology-enabled welfare delivery have created new areas for knowledge exchange.
UNDP’s 2025 partnership review found that India’s crop insurance experience was shared with seven countries, while digital health platforms such as U-WIN and eVIN were shared with Zambia and Lao PDR to strengthen immunisation tracking, vaccine supply chains and last-mile healthcare delivery.
The same partnership increasingly encompasses climate resilience and environmental sustainability.
India and UNDP have worked on climate-resilient livelihoods, sustainable ecosystems and development financing, while the India-UN Development Partnership Fund and IBSA Fund have committed more than US$150 million since their inception towards areas including digital public infrastructure, renewable energy, healthcare and climate resilience.
The model therefore links development cooperation with the wider priorities of the SDGs: poverty reduction, health, technology, gender inclusion, climate action, resilient infrastructure and stronger institutions.
Global South as a partner, not merely a recipient
India’s engagement with developing countries has also acquired a stronger political and diplomatic dimension.
The Voice of Global South Summit, first convened in January 2023, created a platform for developing countries to articulate priorities and exchange solutions.
Its second edition later that year continued this emphasis, while the third edition in August 2024 carried the theme “An Empowered Global South for a Sustainable Future”.
The 2024 summit also saw India propose a Global Development Compact centred on trade, capacity building, technology sharing and financial support.
This approach gives development cooperation a broader meaning. Partnerships become mechanisms for co-creating solutions, building institutions and enabling countries to learn from one another.
A model increasingly defined by shared capability
India’s whole-of-society approach ultimately rests on an idea that development is strongest when government capacity is reinforced by communities, businesses, universities, civil society and international institutions.
The architecture is already visible domestically through SDG localisation and cooperative federalism, and internationally through ITEC, Lines of Credit, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund, the Global South summits and the India-UN Global Capacity-Building Initiative.
As UNDP observed in 2025, India’s development experience is increasingly travelling beyond its borders through South-South cooperation, capacity building and knowledge sharing.
The significance of this trajectory lies not simply in the scale of India’s development partnerships but in the direction they are taking.
From infrastructure to institutions, from technology to training, and from national programmes to international knowledge exchange, India is increasingly turning development experience into a shared resource.
That makes the whole-of-society approach more than a domestic governance framework. It is becoming an instrument of international cooperation — one that connects India’s development journey with the aspirations of a wider Global South, and places shared progress at the centre of global partnership.
