2.10 Swedish Development Cooperation

Magnus Saemundsson is currently the Senior Education Specialist at SIDA, the Swedish governmental agency for development cooperation, based in Cambodia.  He initially worked as a secondary school teacher and lecturer in Sweden before transitioning to the Swedish Ministry of Education. He joined SIDA in 2003 and over the years has been serving as a Senior Education Expert in the Nordic region, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia and other countries.  His work with SIDA Cambodia has focused on supporting the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in improving quality assurance systems in learning and teaching, creating the first multi-donor trust fund to support capacity development at all levels of the education sector, supporting skills training programmes, through private-public partnerships and much more. He speaks to us about the historical and problematic ideas around development work, the Swedish approach to development cooperation, systematic and behaviour change, long term donor investment, the challenge of corruption, building trust, institutional memory residing with local staff and partners, the importance of communication in leadership, the power of knowledge, the role of art and culture, rethinking development support in the context of the pandemic and much more. He joins us from Phnom Phen, Cambodia.