Advancing South-South cooperation in education: Indonesian experience with South Africa

Abstract

Education collaboration is important to increase the quality of human capital. South-South cooperation is conducted to exchange resources, technology, skills, and knowledge between southern countries. The purpose of this research is to investigate the collaboration between Indonesia and South Africa toward advancing South-South Cooperation in education. The data collection used in this qualitative research is an interview and literature study with 9 purposive informants from the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Indonesia Ministry of Education and Culture, and the Embassy of South Africa. The data were obtained within six months. The interview was primarily used to explore the roles and practices of government institutions and universities in fostering education collaboration and human resources development. In this study, the South-South Cooperation helps Indonesia address its educational needs. The result showed that most international education cooperation between both countries is agreed upon at the University-to-University level through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), facing less sustainable challenges and low impact. Therefore, an investment-led model, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and a tool to monitor and evaluate this process are needed to improve South-South Cooperation to achieve its goals.