Emerging economies emphasise horizontality and mutual opportunity in their relationship with developing countries, promising an alternative to the failings of traditional North-South co-operation.
This article draws on research on Brazil’s technical co-operation and its health dimension to compare the Brazilian model with established aid-effectiveness’ principles and to discuss the appropriateness of the latter as standards against which to appraise emerging donors’ co-operation.
The analysis shows that, despite progress towards greater dialogue between traditional and emerging donors, the ‘aid-effectiveness’ framework still falls short of capturing the idiosyncrasies of South-South co-operation and therefore offers an incomplete international standard on how best to conduct development co-operation.