1. At a major multilateral summit in 2015, President Park Geun-hye announced a series of the Republic of Korea’s development cooperation initiatives drawn up on the basis on the country’s development experiences and comparative advantage. In January 2016, the ROK government set “development cooperation” as one of its two major diplomatic goals for the year.

2. Lately, the ROK government has been stepping up development cooperation in the world’s least developed countries and many African countries with vulnerable populations. As part of such efforts, the ROK is planning to conduct a new mobile, complex form of development cooperation project dubbed “Korea Aid.” After prior consultations on “Korea Aid” with Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya, its main partners for development cooperation in Africa, the ROK government has established a relevant plan befitting the situations and demands of those countries.

° The ROK and the three aforementioned countries, sharing the view that President Park’s tour of those countries in late May will serve as a good impetus for starting the aid project, have worked to map out mobile programs in the fields of healthcare, food and culture that are suitable to the countries.

3. “Korea Aid” is linked to the ROK government’s “humanitarian diplomacy” and “development cooperation initiatives.” In particular, the “Better Life for Girls” initiative, announced at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, served as an important basis in the course of preparing for the project.

4. The ROK government, after leading “Korea Aid” projects for a certain period of time, will hand over vehicles to recipient countries in line with the purpose of the development cooperation projects and induce them to implement the projects with a sense of ownership, thereby ensuring the mid- to long-term sustainability of the projects.


* unofficial translation