Background

The ROC sent its first agricultural missions to Asia in the late 1950s, when Taiwan was itself still a developing country. In 1961, Operation Vanguard dispatched agricultural technical missions to Africa to help expand and modernize fruit and vegetable production. The Operation Vanguard missions were consolidated the following year into the ROC-Africa Technical Cooperation Committee, which merged in 1972 with Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Committee of International Technical Cooperation (CITC). The new organization was given overall responsibility of organizing and managing Taiwan's agricultural and fisheries missions in developing nations.

During the 1980s, as Taiwan's economic strength grew, the nation increased its cooperative international development programs. In October 1989, the creation of the International Economic Cooperation Development Fund (IECDF) established a more comprehensive structure overseeing Taiwan's international economic assistance activities.

As the variety of cooperative development projects expanded yet further, and the number of overseas technical missions increased, the government in 1996 and 1997 consolidated the CITC and the IECDF into an independent organization: the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF), a juridical entity. The TaiwanICDF began with an initial capital of approximately NT$11.6 billion, the bulk of which came from the net assets of the IECDF, and is now the principal body overseeing Taiwan's cooperative overseas development programs.

The TaiwanICDF's purpose is to strengthen international cooperation and enhance foreign relations by promoting economic development, social progress and the welfare of the people in partner nations around the world. The TaiwanICDF primarily assists its allies in Central and South America, the East Caribbean, Africa and the Asia Pacific region, but the organization has also worked in Europe and formulates pan-regional assistance programs where possible. Since its inception, the TaiwanICDF has assembled a team of well-trained professional staff, adopted sound management practices, and employed program methodologies successfully used by international economic development agencies.

The TaiwanICDF enthusiastically cooperates with other international development agencies, as well as foreign governments, financial institutions, nongovernment organizations and diverse businesses. The TaiwanICDF's core competencies include technical assistance, investment and lending operations, education and training, and humanitarian assistance. It uses these skills to help partnering nations develop their economies, alleviate poverty, strengthen international human resources, expand agricultural output and rebuild after natural disasters. Technical cooperation programs managed by the TaiwanICDF are structured to ensure that their work can be extended during implementation and replicated elsewhere upon completion. TaiwanICDF education and training programs, often developed in conjunction with government agencies, nongovernment organizations and educational institutions, have developed human resources in nations around the world. The TaiwanICDF's investment and lending activities range from providing micro-credit in rural communities to financing large national infrastructure projects; from developing small businesses to helping nations enlarge and strengthen governmental capacity. Finally, the TaiwanICDF is steadily enlarging the scope of its humanitarian assistance operations, to rapidly come to the assistance of people and nations stricken by natural and human made disasters.

The overall aim of the fund is to share the "Taiwan Experience" of growth and opportunity and make the world a safer, more prosperous, and inclusive place to live.