Inaugurated in July 2002, the Directorate for Strategic Partnerships (DSP) role is to lead organizational efforts in advancing new partnership arrangements that promote rural prosperity, food security and sustainable development across a broad scope of economic and social policies and expanding national and regional frontiers.  As part of the Integrated Management Structure of the IICA administration, the DSP enters into cooperative agreements and partnerships that provide new modalities of support to IICA management units and country offices so that producers, rural communities and policy makers in all thirty-four IICA Member States can develop their capacities for development and change. It provides stewardship for innovative program development, unique partnership arrangements and inter-institutional synergy at national, regional and hemispheric levels that enhances the capabilities of all stakeholders in the Member States for more sustained development efforts towards the Millennium Development Goals of 2015. 

The DSP seeks to generate a new, creative articulation of resources to leverage money, political and policy influence and knowledge to improve agriculture, the food industry and the human condition of the rural poor in each Member State. Implicit in the founding of the DSP is the knowledge and experience that no organization can achieve the improvement of our planet and our hemisphere alone.  DSP looks to identify the best ideas from the most capable people.  DSP cultivates and crafts innovative institutional relationships to develop joint proposals for initiatives and projects using three criteria: the merit of the proposed activity in reducing rural poverty and promoting agricultural competitiveness; the broader impacts of the activity on society and economic development; and IICA comparative advantage to contribute.