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China in Africa, Viewed from Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2015

Adriana Erthal Abdenur
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In the Boane district of Mozambique, about halfway between Maputo and the border with Swaziland, the National Agrarian Research Institute in Umbeluzi hosts two experiments in development cooperation provided by fellow developing countries. Behind a gated wall, the Agricultural Technology Demonstration Center—built in record time by China—experiments with different techniques of vegetable cultivation. Barely 500 meters away, technicians from the Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research, known as EMBRAPA, work with Mozambican counterparts from a food security program, installing an irrigation system along an open field. Taken together, the two projects are emblematic of an emerging tension within Brazil's and China's presence in Africa: does development cooperation in Boane represent competition or complementarity between these providers of development cooperation? In addition, does their proximity suggest a possibility of collaboration between these two providers?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 257 - 267
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

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References

1 Photos of the two sites appear in a presentation by Alex Shankland and Lizbeth Navas-Alemán given at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, on February 12, 2013.

2 Romilly Greenhill, Annalisa Prizzon, and Andrew Rogerson, “How Are Developing Countries Managing the New Aid Landscape?” ODI Centre for Aid & Public Expenditure, March 2013.

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5 An estimated 4.8 million enslaved Africans arrived in Brazil between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII [The trade of the living: The formation of Brazil within the South Atlantic from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries] (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000).

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16 See, e.g., Odebrecht, “Odebrecht Defense and Technology,” n.d., http://odebrecht.com/en/businesses/our-businesses/defense-and-technology (accessed March 8, 2015).

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18 Brazil is part of the G4, which also includes Japan, India, and Germany.

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22 Interview with author, Rio de Janeiro, December 2014.

23 Lobo, “Negociando pelo mundo,” op. cit. note 8.

24 Valor Econômico, “BNDES eleva rigor com empreiteira” [BNDES becomes more rigorous with construction companies], January 27, 2015, http://www.valor.com.br/financas/3879340/bndes-eleva-rigor-com-empreiteira (accessed March 8, 2015).