Mashav was set up in the wake of the
Bandung Conference of 1955, from which Israel had been excluded at the demand of Arab countries who threatened a boycott of the conference if Israel was invited. It was established on
Golda Meir's initiative, in 1958, after her visit to Africa. In the 1960s it was also very active in assistance to agricultural development projects in South America. Since its inception in late 1957, Mashav has striven to share with the rest of the developing world the know-how and technologies which provided the basis for Israel's own rapid development. Mashav started as a modest program, focused on grassroots-level human capacity building at a time when Israel itself was still very much a developing country. It has since blossomed into an extensive program of cooperation throughout the developing world, with the aim of promoting sustainable development and social equity. MASHAV grew gradually and organically in response to repeated requests on the part of the peoples that freed themselves from the yoke of colonialism and were seeking practical and political means of ridding themselves of poverty, hunger and disease that was the heritage of that era. Since its establishment, over 270,000 professionals from more than 132 countries have participated in Mashav's training programs. Mashav promotes the centrality of
human resource enrichment and institutional capacity building in the development process – an approach which has attained global consensus, and implements this principle by offering professional training courses in Israel and in host countries and short and long-term professional consultations. By 2010, Mashav had trained a quarter of a million students, predominantly African, from the developing world in education, health, science and agriculture, cooperating with over 140 countries. The expertise and technology acquired in cultivating areas such as deserts affected by
water scarcity has underwritten many projects. ==India-Israel collaboration==