Do cerrado brasileiro à savana moçambicana: controvérsias da cooperação brasileira na promoção de uma nova revolução verde na África

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2011 Brazil experienced a time of significant expansion of its International Development Cooperation, influenced by changes of the foreign policy towards South-South relations. ProSavana, a trilateral cooperation project between the governments of Brazil, Mozambique and Japan, arises in this context, in order to support the rural development of the Nacala Corridor region in Mozambique. The program is perceived in the thesis as an attempt to assemble a new alliance to respond to an international call for a new phase of what is known as the Long Green Revolution in Africa. A network of actors and interests originated from a previous Japanese-Brazilian partnership focused on the consolidation of agricultural and mineral commodities chains, in which Brazil originally assumed a role in the transmission of rural development views and technologies, in order to reproduce in the Mozambican Savannah a model already tested in the Brazilian Cerrado. By tracing the associations between the various actors and interests, the study shows how narratives about ProSavana are produced and sustained, and how the main controversies and disjunctions emerge. The Program goes through a reframing process, it seeks to dissociate itself from denounces of Land Grab, at the same time that strategies are redefined in order to change the focus of the Program for the integration of small farmers to commercial agriculture. In this process Brazilian actors lose relevance, which raises the central question answer at the conclusion of this thesis: Why the proposal of transferring development visions and public policies, which featured the emergent Brazilian South South cooperation, did not sustain itself in ProSavana design? This issue is raised to the reflection upon the obstacles and possibilities of the diffusion of Brazilian public policies for agriculture and food and nutrition security as a reference of South-South cooperation with African countries, in a local and global context, of disputes over development paradigms and strategies to guarantee food rights.