Development Cooperation Strategies

Development Cooperation Strategies

Since Japan began its development cooperation activities, the political and economic environment in this country and abroad has changed significantly. Research to guide the future direction of JICA projects and strategies through learning from history and empirical analysis is becoming more important than ever before. This research cluster is focusing on studies that recap the history of Japan's development and development cooperation, as well as those that explore the characteristics of its development cooperation, taking the field of industrial development as an example.

In recent years, an increasing number of emerging countries have started their own development cooperation activities, and this has affected the traditional order of assistance led by developed countries. Under these circumstances, we attempt to conduct research that will contribute to the formation of international norms for future development cooperation and work on cross-sectoral issues, while building networks with researchers in developing countries. We will also take on the challenge of research on new subjects such as peace through sports.

Research Project (Ongoing)

Past Research Projects

Effects of SME development assistance: A case of the networking project of the business development services providers in Thailand

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for a large portion of domestic economic countries regardless of developed or developing countries. They contributes to poverty reduction through the creation of employment and an increase in income. However, they are vulnerable to external shocks due to the limited management resources such as human and physical capital, fund, and information, and unable to expand their production and number of workers, which is called by missing-middle problem. Under these circumstances, non-financial support to the enhancement of technology, renewal of product design, or marketing, called Business Development Service (BDS), has increasingly received attention. JICA has so far supported the development of institutions of BDS and capacity building of BDS providers for the purpose of improvement of managerial and technical ability of SMEs. This study take a case of a project conducted in Thailand from May 2013 to May 2016, named “Project for Enhancing Regional Integrated SME Promotion Mechanism in the Kingdom of Thailand." This project installed a general consultation counter at a regional branch of Department of Industrial Promotion, Ministry of Industry of Thailand, and built the networked of BDS providers in a province to improve the quality of BDS and promote its usage. This study quantitatively analyses whether networking of BDS providers increases the demand of SMEs for BDS and leads to the improvement of SMEs' performance through promoting information sharing among BDS providers and decreasing the transaction costs of BDS.

Research Term|2015.09.01〜2017.03.31
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Comparative Study on Development Cooperation Strategy: Focusing on G20 Emerging Economies

Nowadays the emerging economies such as BRICS countries are taking the initiative to develop the global governance, which the western “developed" countries had before. The aid architecture has also significantly changed. Non-DAC countries, as new development actors, have contributed to increasing the flow of development resources for developing countries. The aim of this study is to extrapolate a vision of how the aid architecture will change in next ten years; and to develop the implications for Japan to react properly for that change through clarifying the patterns of development cooperation (or South-South cooperation) by comparing the sequence and the combination of cooperation tools of each aid providers and analysing the impact of emerging aid providers to their partner countries where the competition between emerging and traditional aid providers exists. The findings of this study that estimated the amount of the China’s foreign aid based on primary data were paid attention to by researchers and stakeholders across the globe. The study also revealed the foreign aid activities of the new development actors, such as India and Indonesia which are likely to have been ignored before, while pointing out the potentialities that intellectual interactions between developing countries would contribute to development in these countries themselves. In addition, these findings were opened widely to the public, including a lecture at DIE (German Development Institute), a co-organized symposium with DIE and a policy brief to policy makers.

Research Term|2012.11.01〜2014.09.30
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