ICGEB: South-South & Triangular Cooperation Featured Partner
About ICGEB
Established in 1983, ICGEB is supported by its Host Governments of Italy, India and South Africa, and by 62 other Member States, in consolidating its actions that champion science for global sustainable development. ICGEB’s vision is to be the world’s leading intergovernmental organisation for research, training and technology transfer in the field of Life Sciences and Biotechnology. The organization’s Mission is to combine scientific research with capacity enhancement, thereby promoting sustainable global development.
Its scientific publications and collaborations reflect the continued pursuit of top-class basic research, through which solutions to many of humanity’s major problems can be addressed. The organization’s actions align Biotechnology for a Sustainable Future with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to tackle problems related to health, food security, climate change and the environment. ICGEB’s infrastructure and innovative programs are far-reaching and provide world-class education, capacity enhancement, technology transfer, and the promotion of international scientific collaboration and diplomacy.
ICGEB and South-South Cooperation
South-South cooperation is making increasingly significant contributions to global and regional development. ICGEB aims to bring about sustainable development, ensuring that the benefits arising from modern biology and biotechnology can also reach our communities in the global south.
As an intergovernmental Organization in which the great majority of Member States are countries of the Global South, ICGEB implements South-South cooperation in all of its actions, promoting scientific cooperation, capacity building and technology transfer. The ICGEB offers a modern model for cooperative action, including knowledge exchange and peer learning for human capital development. It delivers biotech solutions aligned to real needs and operates with triangular partners, such as the Government of Italy, to provide expertise and funding.
In this moment of global crisis, the need for South-South and Triangular Scientific cooperation has never been greater. ICGEB has responded with efforts to directly provide rapid assistance to its constituency with diagnostics, surveillance and capacity enhancement for handling the COVID-19 crisis, bringing critical information and technologies to where they are most needed. Learn more about Resources, Tools and Know-how ICGEB offers to fight the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 to its Member States.
ICGEB is expanding joint activities by promoting programs for brain drain reversal in the Global South, enhancing South-South cooperation and exchange, and using science and diplomacy to promote peace and security. Through partnerships, ICGEB can better fulfill its mandate by strengthening its ability to offer scientific capacity building to support sustainable development; offering biotech solutions tailored to the real needs of different countries in the Global South, which range from health to agriculture and clean energy, to generating knowledge sharing and outreach programs.
The ICGEB awards fellowships across its Member States worldwide, organizes scientific meetings and courses in the South, provides grants and early return career grants to encourage triangular mobility. It transfers technology to the South to develop local industry production for diagnostics, vaccines and biopharmaceutical products and processes that are adaptable and affordable.
Map showing the awarded and ongoing South-South mobility of SMART (Scientific Mobility for Advanced Research Training) Fellowships
The Organization is establishing Regional Research Centres (in China, Panama and Sri Lanka) to create regional hubs for science, technology and innovation in the South, promoting cross-border and interregional coordination and collaboration as well regionally-tailored research in Life Sciences to assist countries in building human and institutional capacity. It provides technical assistance in the development and implementation of biosafety regulatory systems and is a consolidated reference point for Parties that have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, in particular the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, for the transboundary movement of GMOs. The ICGEB is instrumental in the establishment of national biosafety regulatory frameworks and offices in the Global South and the development of related administrative and technical procedures.
Being a member of the ICGEB extends far beyond the practical benefits that individual scientists and research centres can obtain from the ICGEB institutional programmes. It means belonging to an Intergovernmental Organization with more than 60 Member States, thus constituting the global authority and advocate on all issues related to the use of biotechnology for sustainable development. The ICGEB community is, therefore, a credible, neutral and strong global voice for biotechnology.
For the Least Developed Countries, membership in the ICGEB means having access to its vast and long- standing international network, and to be able to take part and benefit from the global advances being made in the Life Sciences. For countries with emerging economies, membership can facilitate the creation of regional research hubs within the geographical area of the country thereby directly promoting the use of biotechnology to address the problems important to that region. Finally, for all countries, membership in ICGEB results in partnering to promote scientific learning and innovation across a unique technological and educational platform; advancing towards the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda, in particular SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure – and benefitting from its flagship extramural programmes: Fellowships, Research Grants, Meetings and Courses.
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