Brazil’s South South Cooperation with Africa : a win win Relationship ? The case of biofuel production in Mozambique

Since Lula’s presidency, South-South development cooperation (SSDC) has been at the heart of Brazil foreign policy priorities. Brazil is now recognized as an emerging actor in international development cooperation considering its financial investments and the deployment of its many technical cooperation projects. Despite its cooperation in its own region, Brazil mobilizes a considerable amount of resources towards SSDC in Africa, and especially in Portuguese speaking countries, where it develops a “solidarity diplomacy”. Among the many technical cooperation partnerships, two fields of SSDS are considered as priorities for Brazil in Africa; agriculture and biofuels production. Being one of the world most important agricultural producer and exporter and due to the fast growing of its agribusiness industry, Brazil possess a specific expertise he wishes to share with Africa to support its agricultural revolution and to insure its food and energy security. Therefore, Mozambique has been identified as a privileged partner to develop agricultural projects, including biofuels production. Among others, ProSAVANA, a trilateral cooperation project developed in collaboration with Japan, is a very important, but controversial project.

Being an emerging country, Brazil has its own strategic, political and commercial interests. Therefore, it is relevant to ask ourselves if an emerging country can deploy a selfless SSDC policy and establish a win win relationship? Is Brazil’s SSDC policy motivated by principles of solidarity or is more of a tool to consolidate its status as a global power? This papers wishes to analyses the real motivations behind Brazil’s SSDC towards Africa.