Some 10,000 kilometres from the rolling tea fields of east China, tea farmers in Kenya are fighting climate change using Chinese knowhow.
From planting trees to organically fertilising, tea plantations in the highlands of Kenya – the world’s leading tea exporter – have taken up a series of practices taught by Chinese experts with the aim of reducing their carbon footprints.
The project, which kicked off last year and is due to last until the end of 2026, is an example of “trilateral cooperation.” This is where governments, companies or NGOs from the Global North and Global South partner to deliver a development project in another Global South country. For some, that cooperation must be a form of development aid, such as a project to make agriculture more sustainable and so increase food security. For others, it has a broader meaning that could include building a highway to facilitate trade.
Trilateral cooperation is “very important” to the world’s effort to tackle climate change, says Li Xin, a member of the Chinese expert team working with Kenyan tea farmers. He is a researcher with the Tea Research Institute in Hangzhou, part of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
“Some developing countries urgently need help because they do not have finance or technologies”, he stresses. “What we really need is for some major countries to shoulder that responsibility.”
Teaming up for development
Trilateral cooperation, also known as “triangular cooperation”, is a concept closely linked with “South-South cooperation”. The latter, born out of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Indonesia, sees developing countries working with each other to help one or both develop.
Although the earliest examples of trilateral cooperation can be traced back to the 1950s, its definition, to a large degree, depends on who you ask.
Some researchers say it refers strictly to development cooperation that sees a “Northern” provider or multilateral organisation – or both – facilitate a South-South exchange. Others argue it has a much wider scope and also covers trade and business investments, such as Chinese companies teaming up with European partners to develop hydropower plants in Africa or roads in Eastern Europe.
In the first case, there are clear roles in the cooperation. The “facilitator” is either from a developed country or an international organisation, such as a United Nations (UN) agency. The “pivotal” is a developing country partner. The “beneficiary” receives the project. This is according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organisation whose members are largely developed countries.
“These roles can be taken up by anyone, it doesn’t have to be states. It can also be the private sector, civil society, academia, think-tanks, research institutes, and so on,” says Nadine Piefer-Söyler, a policy analyst at the OECD’s Development Co-operation Directorate.
The “core” is that the experience of the pivotal partner is close to what is requested by the beneficiary, Piefer-Söyler tells Dialogue Earth.
“Ideally, all three partners learn and exchange so that it’s not a unidirectional transfer of knowledge to one country by the two others; it is more like a circular exchange of experiences,” she adds.
Tea and tilapia
Trilateral cooperation has received “significantly more attention” since 2015 when the UN proposed the Sustainable Development Goals, according to Yuan Xiaohui, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.
The Kenyan tea project is a demonstration of this. It is part of a wider collaborative effort between the governments of Germany, China and Kenya, as well as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The USD 2.5 million initiative, partially funded by Germany, aims to enhance the resilience of Kenya’s tea industry, which contributes to roughly a quarter of the country’s export earnings but is increasingly threatened by extreme weather.
China largely plays its role through the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Programme, an initiative established in 2009 and supported by the Chinese government through a trust fund. China has donated USD 130 million to the fund so far.
Chinese tea researcher Li and his colleagues are helping Kenyan farmers build “carbon-neutral” tea plantations, using techniques tried and tested in a pilot project in Lishui, in China’s Zhejiang province.
The idea was requested by the Kenyan side after several years of discussions, Li said. The main goal for his team is to design technical strategies that enable sustainable operations at Kenyan tea farms.
China prefers working with international organisations, such as the UN agencies, according to a paper written by Zhang Chao, a researcher at the Institute of European Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Such organisations are deemed to have “greater neutrality” and “less political sensitivity”, the paper said.
But China has also worked directly with developed nations in the past. One example is a 2013-2017 agricultural technology transfer programme between the UK and Chinese governments in Africa and Southeast Asia – a forerunner of trilateral cooperation between the two countries.
The UK Department for International Development provided GBP 10 million (about USD 16 million in 2013) to the programme, while China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs gave “in-kind support” by sending experts or other resources.
In Malawi, the project focused on the production of tilapia, a type of freshwater fish. Chinese experts trained 100 local farmers using a series of techniques, from how to construct ponds to how to improve feeding regimes.
“China had done an amazing job transforming its agriculture and developing technologies that were appropriate for smallholder farmers,” James Keeley, who headed the programme’s management office, tells Dialogue Earth.
The UK didn’t have that, but it wanted to partner with Africa to develop those value chains, Keeley said. “So, it was much better to work with China to do that.”
Beyond aid
Some argue that trade, investments and construction contracts should be defined as “trilateral cooperation”, as long as those projects comprise players from three or more countries. Others see this as a “grey area”.
“Third-party market cooperation” under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for example, is a form of trilateral cooperation, says Jiang Yang, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. This refers to economic cooperation between businesses from China and another country in a third market.
Another researcher, who requested anonymity, agrees with Jiang’s view, pointing to a newly built highway in Georgia as an example.
The road is part of the E60 European Transit Road linking Europe and Asia. Its construction is funded by the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, but the contracts went to five Chinese state-owned companies, according to news site Politico.
The European Investment Bank describes the E60 as an extension to a piece of key transport infrastructure launched by the EU to improve the bloc’s connectivity: the Trans-European Transport Network. Chinese state-owned newspaper, People’s Daily, meanwhile, described the Georgian section of E60 as part of Beijing-Tbilisi cooperation under the BRI.
Despite involving parties from the EU, China and Georgia, several experts tell Dialogue Earth the highway does not count as “trilateral cooperation”. They consider the Chinese companies involved in it as “subcontractors” to an economic investment.
The diverging understanding of trilateral cooperation is caused by the fact that China – a major player in South-South Cooperation – defines development cooperation differently to developed countries, Jiang says.
“Traditional Western definitions for development cooperation are relatively narrow. They largely mean foreign aid,” Jiang explains. “But many examples of China’s development cooperation are investments by companies.”
China’s cabinet, the State Council, described the BRI as “an important platform” for China’s international development cooperation in a 2021 white paper. It said the country “has developed aid-providing models with Chinese characteristics through long-term practice”.
These models include not only voluntary services and humanitarian aid, but also the provision of “aid construction of whole projects”, materials and technical transfer, among others, the State Council said.
According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, “aid construction of whole projects” means Chinese partners conduct or supervise the construction, installation and production of equipment or infrastructure projects, financed by China’s foreign aid. China completed 423 such projects between 2013 and 2018, the white paper states.
Future prospects
“Poverty trends have become worse after Covid; global governance is an issue where we have to work together; the green transition is a big challenge,” says Mariella Di Ciommo, an associate director at the think-tank European Centre for Development Policy Management.
She thinks it is necessary for Europe to be “very creative” about how it collaborates with its partners on such issues, and calls for experimentation.
“China and the West have their respective advantages,” Jiang says. “China is more experienced in providing technological support and establishing mutually beneficial business relationships; while the West has a tradition in carrying out poverty-alleviation, social and environmental projects. The two sides can complement each other,” she adds.
In particular, China has a huge role to play in supporting the world’s energy transition due to its technological and price advantages.
For example, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2024, China launched the “Africa Solar Belt” programme, supported by the World Resources Institute. Beijing aims to provide GBP 10.7 million (USD 13.9 million) in public funds to supply 50,000 African households with solar home systems between 2024 and 2027.
Nevertheless, shifting geopolitics have brought challenges to the horizon. Wealthy countries have been slashing their foreign aid budgets – often to prioritise their own interest, such as national security.
US President Donald Trump has announced plans to cut tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid and shuttered the US Agency for International Development. Many EU countries, such as France and the Netherlands, have also announced significant chops. The UK said in February that it would reduce aid spending to 0.3% of its gross national income in 2027, the lowest since 1999.
Jiang thinks that reality has led some developed countries to change their traditional views on international development cooperation.
“Their foreign aid budgets are shrinking. Some of them face inflation, energy crises and uncertainty in the global economy,” she says. “Therefore, they are now more open to the idea of using international development cooperation as a platform to help their companies to grow globally.”
Jiang calls for more teamwork in an increasingly divided world, driven by western countries’ efforts to “de-risk” from China, international conflicts and other factors.
“What the Global South needs is global cooperation, not an attempt to force them to choose a side.”
