Facilitated inter-firm collaboration in Ghana: The case of Danida's private-sector development projects

What is it about?

During the last two decades development assistance organisations have endorsed the need to support private enterprise development in developing countries as an instrument for overall economic development and poverty reduction. Facilitation of collaboration between developed and developing country firms through match-making has become one of the most popular forms of assistance in this endeavour. Although such match-making projects vary in design, they all involve a facilitating organisation that identify partners and sponsor the first steps in the establishing of a business platform for the co-operation. Normally, match-making projects aims at building long-term business relations. Pure trade relations are excluded. The aim of this paper is to discuss the mechanisms of facilitating such inter-firm collaborations and to assess how effective they are in bridging the often large terms cultural, technological, and management gaps between companies in developed and developing countries. The discussions will be illustrated with case examples drawn from Ghana and Vietnam, two of the thirteen developing countries in Danish International Development Assistance has made remarkable impact with their Private Sector Development Programmes. The paper will conclude with the formulation of some guidelines for the design of match-making programmes.

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