Brazil in Africa : between natural partnership for development and interests of an emerging power

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Brazil in Africa: between natural partnership for

development and interests of an emerging power

Milan Nascimento

Thesis supervisor: Sijeong Lim

Second reader: Seiki Tanaka

June 2016

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1. Introduction

Despite the difficulties of measuring the impact of international aid initiatives, there are strong indicatives that Western development assistance has had rather disappointing results in improving the reality of poverty-struck countries in Africa throughout the past decades (Easterly 2009). The approaches by traditional donors at generating economic growth through external interventions have risked causing unintended negative effects in recipient countries. And yet, Western donors have almost continuously increased aid flows towards African states, often making use of approaches that have repeatedly proven unsuccessful (Easterly 2009). At the same time, the region was once more made a foreign policy priority by Western donors at the turn of the millennium (Easterly 2009), leading its development environment to become increasingly competitive (White 2013).

While traditional donors seem to resist to learning from past experiences, the early 2000s have seen a growing interest of emerging countries in development assistance to Africa (Burges 2012; Stolte 2012; Visentini 2014). Countries like China, India, and Brazil have become growingly engaged in contributing to international development efforts (Burges 2012; White 2013). These countries have frequently sought alternative approaches to development that challenge the traditional aid architecture by providing cooperation through non-official channels (Burges 2012). Brazilian development cooperation, for instance, is believed to contrast with Western development efforts in a series of aspects. In opposition to traditional donors, Brazil’s direct financial aid initiatives are low when compared to its technical cooperation1 programs (Sousa 2010), which are supposedly not bound to political conditionality. While the aid provided by the traditional Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) donors has concessional financial terms, the resources provided by Brazil are non-refundable (The World Bank & IPEA 2011). Therefore, the investments made by the Brazilian government in foreign countries and multilateral organizations (The World

1

The OECD (2001) defines technical cooperation as “(a) grants to nationals of aid recipient countries

receiving education or training at home or abroad, and (b) payments to consultants, advisers and similar personnel as well as teachers and administrators serving in recipient countries, (including the cost of associated equipment)”.

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Bank & IPEA 2011) are believed to go beyond official development assistance (ODA)2 as defined by the OECD (OECD, cited in The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

In fact, Brazil presents a variety of features that stand in contrast to those found in donor countries which have long been involved in development cooperation. First, the country is a former colony itself, sharing a common historical, linguistic and cultural heritage with many Sub-Saharan countries. In the first decade of the 21st century, it thus implemented innovative social policies, praised to have lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and therefore representing a valuable asset for African partners facing similar challenges (Tepperman 2016).

Second, Brazil has been a recipient of ODA for decades. In the 1970s, the country began to shift from being mainly a recipient of aid to initiating its own cooperation projects abroad, with a particular emphasis on technical cooperation. Its experience as a recipient of aid, which followed the aid paradigms prevalent in the international aid system throughout time, is thus believed to have shaped its profile as a donor and, ultimately, to have contributed to the country’s attempts at subverting, at least partially, the traditional aid structures (Paz 2015).

Brazilian officials have indeed underlined that the country’s development cooperation differs from traditional donors in being driven by solidarity and non-hierarchical South-South cooperation, offering a mode of interaction that allegedly differs from both traditional donor’s and other emerging country’s approaches to development (Inoue & Vaz 2012). In line with the general interest in emerging donor countries, a burgeoning body of literature has attempted to understand the nature of development assistance provided by these countries and the motivations behind it.

Brazil presents itself as qualitatively different from traditional donors. For instance, the country claims to have signed the Paris Declaration as a recipient of aid only and initially resisted to agreeing with the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). These agreements were perceived as rules imposed by Northern donors and inconsistent with the principle of non-interference (Sousa 2010). In addition, Brazilian diplomats argued

2_{The OECD defines ODA as “flows of official financing administered with the promotion of the}

economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective, and which are concessional in character with a grant element of at least 25 percent (using a fixed 10 percent rate of discount)”.

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that the agreements did not include mechanisms of South-South cooperation as legitimate channels for development cooperation (The World Bank & IPEA 2011). While Brazilian officials praise mainly altruist motivations for the country’s development efforts, however, scholars have pointed at the existence of geopolitical and economic interests in association to its increased development involvement (Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009; Burges 2012; Cabral & Weinstock 2010; Inoue & Vaz 2012; Stolte 2012; Visentini 2009; White 2013). And yet, mostly due to difficulties of obtaining data on the country’s technical assistance programs (Burges 2012; Inoue & Vaz 2013), most analyses of Brazil’s development cooperation3 have been rather incipient and therefore failed to empirically examine the motivations behind Brazil’s increased development efforts. Moreover, most researchers have emphasized the political aspects of Brazil’s increased presence in Africa, expressed in the opening of embassies on the continent and the exchange of visits by high government officials. There is much agreement, however, that, like both traditional donors and fellow emerging players, Brazil has chosen Africa as the main destination for development aid (Burges 2012; Stolte 2012). This was particularly so during the government of Lula da Silva (Dauvergne & Farias 2012). According to figures by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), by 2009 more than half of Brazil’s development budget was deployed to Africa (ABC, cited in White 2013). Simultaneously, the first decade of the 21st century was accompanied by an increased presence of Brazilian businesses in the region, generating questions regarding the role of Brazilian firms in its development strategy.

Figure 1 highlights the increase of Brazil’s expenditures with international development projects in 2009 and 2010, pointing out the importance of Africa among the regions benefitting from Brazilian development cooperation.

3

“Development cooperation”, “development assistance” and “foreign aid” will be used to refer to Brazil’s international development programs, including its technical assistance projects.

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Figure 1 - Brazilian Investments in International Development Projects, share per continent, 2009-2010

Note: The total amounts, in 2009 and 2010, respectively, were US$ 2.012.682 and US$ 2.082.674 for Asia and the Middle East; US$ 7.575.235 and US$ 14.437.785 for Latin America; and US$ 9.608.816 and US$ 22.049.368 for Africa. Source: ABC, cited in World Bank & IPEA 2011.

So what are the motivations driving Brazil’s development cooperation in Africa? Do these motivations indeed differ from those generally attributed to traditional donors? Does the Brazilian approach to development differ from that adopted by traditional and other emerging donors? Or is Brazil not that different after all?

The identification of Brazil’s donor motivations thus seems pertinent in order to bring about a more profound debate of aid policies in the domestic realm. Aid provision has been considered to make up a small share of donor country’s government budgets (Brech & Potrafke 2014). Consequently, changes in a country’s overall budget may not have as much influence on foreign aid policies as on other areas of public policy, implying reduced levels of internal politicization. However, as more generous estimates of Brazil’s development assistance have placed its foreign assistance budget between 0.10% and 0.15% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Burges 2014), international analysts have compared the country to other major donors (The Economist 2010). Therefore – and having in mind that Brazil still faces its own internal social and economic challenges – a detailed analysis of the strategy and driving forces behind Brazil’s development program seems highly relevant.

Given the centrality attributed to Africa by the Brazilian aid establishment, it seems appropriate that, in seeking to shed light on the motivations behind Brazil’s development cooperation, this work focuses on Brazilian development aid deployed to

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African states in order to draw inferences capable of offering an explanation of Brazil’s development efforts in general.

2. Literature Review

The academic debate on Brazil’s emerging development assistance programs in Africa has scrutinized diverse aspects of the country’s approach on the continent. Brazil has been considered an emerging donor alike China, India, and South Korea, whose proactivity in Africa has increasingly caught the academic world’s attention.

In this light, this chapter gathers an overview of the findings offered by both Brazilian and international researchers. In the first section, I will situate Brazil within the context of the new donor phenomenon. The following section is dedicated to outlining the various dimensions of Brazil’s approach as a provider of international development assistance, pointing out the features that have led researchers to argue for Brazil’s strategy as distinct from that adopted by both traditional and other emerging donors. The third section offers the main insights researchers have offered when investigating Brazil’s donor motivations. The fourth section briefly introduces the discussion about the sustainability of Brazil’s recent emergence in international development assistance. Finally, the fifth section identifies the gap yet persisting in the literature on the topic.

2.1. Brazil as part of the New Donors Phenomenon

Since the turn of the millennium, Africa has gained increased prominence as the “latest frontier of global capitalism” (Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009), attracting investments in sectors ranging from raw material exploration to infrastructure building and exports. The continent is considered the last area with strategic resources that is yet under the influence of what some call “declining powers” and has been the stage of a "new race" among states aiming at occupying the region’s specific economic sectors (Visentini 2014, p. 59). This trend has been accompanied by renewed interests for the region as a destination for development assistance and led scholars to argue that the continent’s development environment has become just as competitive as its investment environment (White 2013). However, differently than in the past, the continent is now made up of nations in a process of consolidation, presenting their own political will (Visentini 2014).

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The latter observation is particularly relevant as the efforts of traditional donor countries seem to have achieved little success in contributing to the development of poverty-struck African countries (Easterly 2009). The failure of past development efforts has played a part in making the phenomenon of emerging donors a central field of interest for scholars around the world and academics seem to agree, to a certain extent, that the world is moving towards a greater geographical and political variety of donors (Wright & Winters 2010).

As a result, a burgeoning body of literature has analyzed the efforts of new donor countries. Given its growing involvement in development cooperation since the mid-2000s, especially in Africa, international analysts have considered Brazil as part of this phenomenon along with countries like China and India but also Turkey and South Korea (Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009; White 2013). Consequently, Brazil earned itself increased attention by both national and international commentators and news media (The Economist 2010; Foley 2010). And yet, as will be explained in the following session, it remains an open question whether and how Brazil’s development approach differs from both traditional donors’ and other emerging country’s involvement in the international aid system.

2.2. Brazil as an emerging donor: dimensions of an alternative strategy

At first glance, Brazil’s development efforts seem to contrast with Western, donor-led aid flows. Brazilian officials claim that their country’s approach to development is qualitatively different from that of traditional donors, offering the potential of better suiting the needs of recipient countries (White 2013). In fact, the official narrative refuses to accept the label of “donor country” and the inherently hierarchical relationship that is believed to derive from such a position, arguing for solidarity as the country’s main drive for insertion in Africa (Inoue & Vaz 2012). Clearly, the country’s authorities have strongly resisted to framing its increased participation in development efforts as comparable to the practices adopted by traditional donors: Brazil’s development agency claims to pursue a differentiated strategy in matters of pace and scale, following the belief that a slow but sure pace is more likely to increase the chances of success (ABC, cited in The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

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This aspect has also been identified by Burges (2014), whose work highlights the official narrative's focus on the lasting benefits generated by Brazilian cooperation in partner countries. Indeed, Brazilian companies – widely acknowledged as part of the country’s strategy for development promotion abroad and at home (Burges 2014; Schlesinger 2013; White 2013) – have been keen to employ as many locals as possible. On the one hand, this seems to be related to the fact that Brazil, a resource-abundant country itself, tends to invest more in labor intensive industries – like the construction sector – than donors such as China, which is interested in resource extractive industries that do not create as many jobs for locals. On the other hand, Brazilian companies are admittedly committed to hiring locals on all levels of management and execution (Stuenkel 2013; White 2013). Although in some countries regulations restricting the employment of expats have set additional incentives to the employment of local professionals by Brazilian firms, this approach clearly diverges from that frequently attributed to China or the DAC-members, which have long been accused of seeking resources and leaving little beneficial effects in host countries. Although it might be a stretch to understand Brazilian development cooperation as driven by such companies, the country's technical assistance programs are believed to create favorable conditions for Brazilian firms to enter specific markets (Burges 2014).

Much of the existing literature has underlined Brazil’s advantages in dealing with African countries (Stolte 2012; Cabral & Weinstock 2010; The World Bank & IPEA 2011). The country enjoys a rather positive image on the continent, sharing a cultural, linguistic, and historical heritage with many of the region’s countries in general and former Portuguese colonies in particular (Cabral & Weinstock 2010). Such affinities facilitate investments by Brazilian companies and have fostered their insertion in some of these countries since the 1970s (Stolte 2012). As outlined by Burges (2014), common language has worked well to advance especially those features of Brazilian development assistance which are related to economic and political interests in Lusophone Africa. Although African officials have pointed out that Brazil faces the same conditions as other country's companies, Brazilian firms seem to profit from their ease to operate in Portuguese and understand Lusophone cultural norms.

Moreover, Brazil was and still is a recipient of development assistance itself and therefore has accumulated experience in handling aid inflows which can be useful for other recipients (Stolte 2012). The country’s experience as a recipient of ODA has

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shaped two key features of its development cooperation. First, Brazil was a target of politically-motivated aid – especially by the United States of America (USA) – and that experience contributed to making it cautious of such motivations in development assistance, and critical of traditional donor countries and structures. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was supportive of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985 through specific initiatives such as the Police Program, which aimed at training police officers for conflicts with members of the opposition and communists (Paz 2015). This way, the Agency contributed to the survival of an illegitimate dictatorship.

Second, Brazil was a beneficiary of technical cooperation, which led the country to develop a positive stance toward technical cooperation-oriented development assistance. The aid it received, especially between the 1960s and 1980s, was crucial for the constitution and professionalization of some of the country’s research and technical specialization centers such as the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, (EMBRAPA), the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ) and the National Service for Industrial Training (SENAI). This is especially important as these organizations play a central role in Brazil’s development cooperation abroad (Cabral & Weinstock 2010; The World Bank & IPEA 2011). The country’s transference of expertise hence is made easier by the fact that its geological and climatic conditions are to a large extent similar to those found in many Sub-Saharan countries (Stolte 2012; The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

Furthermore, Brazil’s development assistance strategy is shaped by its experience as a newly industrialized economy, or upper middle income economy – according to the World Bank classification (The World Bank 2016). Therefore, the country’s assistance projects in Africa are based on its own experiences with poverty alleviation, achieved through conditional cash-transfer programs such as Hunger Zero and Bolsa Família, and attracting great interest by African countries like Mozambique and Nigeria (Stolte 2012; Stuenkel 2013). In addition, Brazil’s position as the world’s second largest producer of food makes it a particularly important partner for Africa in matters of food security (Cheru & Modi 2013).

Overall, Brazil’s emphasis on technical assistance has been considered an advantage of its development programs. For Burges (2014), the technical nature of assistance in

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addition to the rather limited scale of Brazilian projects reduces the risk of generating aid-dependent relationships with recipient countries. Moreover, the primacy of technical assistance makes Brazilian assistance less vulnerable to the corruption problems that trigger the need of oversight of expenditures in OECD-DAC agencies. Thus, it highlights the conceptual difference between traditional donor country projects and the Brazilian approach: while the former design and propose ideas that are believed to work, the latter prioritizes the transmission and application of policies and projects that have already proven relatively successful in Brazil to various political, economic and cultural contexts.

Last but not least, much attention has been given to the alleged inexistence of political conditionality in Brazil’s development cooperation. For instance, this is expressed in the criticism Brazil has earned for its little interest in promoting participative democracy – a key element of its development strategy at home – in its foreign aid programs (White 2013). The fact that those who embrace more mainstream ideas of development assistance voice criticism against Brazil’s passive stance toward using political conditionality indeed highlights that Brazil’s approach might be distinct, as the international community – including traditional donors – seem to recognize the difference.

2.3. The discussion regarding Brazil’s donor motivations: complementary and partially opposing findings

Despite the alleged differences between Brazil and other donor countries, the nature of Brazil’s move to Africa has been made an object of investigation by scholars engaged in understanding the country’s renewed interest in Africa. Brazilian and international researchers have reached complementary and partially opposing findings offering nuanced interpretations of Brazil’s aid programs. Inoue and Vaz (2012), for instance, have found that, in aiming at distinguishing itself from Western donors, Brazil is actively attempting to dissociate itself from the paternalism, conditionality and political interference in domestic affairs often attributed to traditional donor countries. And yet, the authors question this rhetoric and suggest that the empirical evidence does not allow for a comprehension of Brazil’s involvement as beyond hierarchical international relations.

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Similar observations have been made by other authors (White 2013; Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009; Burges 2012; Stolte 2012). According to Stolte (2012), a look at Brazil’s trade relations with Africa suggests that, similarly to other BRICS, the country seems mainly driven by its interest in natural resources. The trade balances between Brazil and its African partners are in favor of the latter and reveal that commodities are responsible for the overwhelming share of Brazilian imports. Nonetheless, as Stolte continues, in contrast to countries like China and India, Brazil is a resource-rich country itself. Therefore, the author attributes the country’s strong participation in Africa’s resource sector to the fact that the majority of Brazil's large-scale enterprises are specialized in resources and construction. Rather than seeing it as indicative of a resource oriented approach to development, the drive to Africa is explained by the efforts to secure the companies' internationalization processes and diversification from the Brazilian market. The credit lines provided since the mid-2000s by the Brazilian Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) to Brazilian businesses going abroad can be understood as supportive of this argument (White 2013).

While Brazil's economic dependence on Africa is expected to diminish in the next decade due to the discovery of the pré-sal oilfield on the country’s South-East coast, Africa is becoming a growing market for Brazil’s processed products. This trend suggests that the country might be seeking long-term commercial interests by securing the region as a future market for Brazilian products (Stolte 2012). In a similar interpretation, Burges (2014) acknowledges the economic interest dimension of Brazil's aid program and argues that Africa is increasingly seen as a potential market for Brazilian value-added goods, placing the country's Africa policy within its domestic-growth strategy. In this sense, both authors join the rank of authors identifying Brazilian assistance as far from completely altruistic.

In the case of Stolte (2012), however, the author’s overall finding is that, despite the economic benefits, Brazilian cooperation is driven rather by foreign policy ambitions than economic interests, enabling the country to raise its profile as a leading player from the South and allowing for a role change as it joins the prestigious club of donor countries. This position is shared by Stuenkel (2013), who argues that Brazil’s aid provision has allowed the country to change its image abroad and at home, and thus adds that the aid programs have helped the country’s pursuit of a more significant role in international relations and increased global influence, particularly in Africa.

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For Visentini (2014), the approximation between Brazil and Africa is still in transformation and comprises a variety of actors and diverse goals, taking place in a complex regional and international constellation. Given this background, the author contends that it cannot yet be said whether Brazil’s engagement on the continent follows the rationale of prestige diplomacy, soft imperialism or an association between two peripheries of the world system in search of socio-economic development. Furthermore, Visentini acknowledges the economic dimension of the Brazil-Africa relationship but moves on to identify two additional aspects of the interaction: a political-diplomatic dimension, expressed not only in the pursuit of Africa's support for the aspiration of occupying a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), but also in the attempts at constructing a cohesive group of countries capable of acting collectively in political and commercial negotiations in organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO); and a social and technical dimension, characterized by the significant improvements achieved by Brazil in the social, educational and technical spheres, adding attractiveness to its South-South cooperation initiatives, especially for African countries.

Finally, Paz (2015) contends that Brazil’s assistance programs cannot be understood in dissociation of its larger foreign policy activism in recent years. In this sense, its development efforts attempt at influencing the normative agenda of the international system in general and not only the global aid architecture. The author thus adds that, despite the fact that most of the literature underlines donor motivations that go beyond idealism, there clearly is an altruist bias in its conception. According to interviews with Brazilian diplomats made by the author, the economic dimension gained strength within Brazil's foreign ministry throughout the 1990s, indicating that the idea of promoting technical cooperation as a tool to advance economic interests might have been inspired by traditional North-South approaches that sought to open and maintain new markets. However, the author understands principles as solidarity and reciprocity to have predominated over economic interests in recent years. Based on an interview with Marcio Corrêa, an ABC officer responsible for Brazil’s cooperation with international fora, Paz argues that the detachment between technical cooperation and economic interests can be observed in the relationship between ABC and the Department for Commercial Promotion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which do not coordinate the design of projects in recipient countries with one another. And yet, the author highlights

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that, beyond the official motivations for Brazil's interest in development cooperation, interviews and much of the existing literature have revealed the pursuit of gains in terms of soft power4 and prestige5. In this sense, it is understood as a means to consolidate the country's leadership among countries of the South.

2.4. Sustainable or temporary engagement?

It is worth noting that there is yet much uncertainty regarding Brazil’s material capabilities to secure its long-term activities in Africa. The country’s capacity to contribute to the development of less developed countries has been considered to be founded in its own domestic success in fighting poverty and achieving economic growth and stability. In opposition to Lula’s government, during which development initiatives experienced an unprecedented boost (Burges 2014), the mandate of Dilma Rousseff (2010- ) saw a reduction of the resources deployed to the country’s development programs (Burges 2014; Paz 2015). These budget cuts have forced ABC to refuse the requests of partner countries for technical cooperation, especially from African countries (Burges 2014). Consequently, there are fears that President Dilma's focus on domestic economic issues and external commercial relations, reducing the country's emphasis on South-South cooperation initiatives, may lead to an interruption of previous and current programs and put at risk the gains of soft power that Brazil has earned through its international development efforts in the last decade (Paraguassu 2014).

Similarly, and with an eye on the private sector dimension of Brazil’s cooperation initiatives, Barbosa, Narciso and Biancalana (2009) have pointed to internal economic imbalances and policies that need to be addressed if the internationalization of Brazilian companies is to be fostered in the long run. As the country experiences its worst economic crisis in decades, such criticism becomes particularly important.

4_{Joseph Nye (1990, p. 168) defined Soft Power as "the ability of a country to structure a situation so that}

other countries develop preferences or define their interests in ways consistent with its own".

5_{For Morgenthau (1962, cited Burges 2014), the pursuit of prestige is one of the reasons for states to}

provide foreign aid. Ultimately, this strategy seeks to construct linkages between the recipients' ruling elite and the donors' government.

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With the suspension of Dilma's government in April 2016, Brazil seems to be entering a period of internal turmoil and uncertainty. As has been suggested by Visentini (2014), time will show what place Africa will occupy in Brazil’s international strategy.

2.5. Remaining gaps in the Brazilian aid literature

As has been suggested by Inoue and Vaz (2012), Brazil's claim to horizontal development assistance needs to be scrutinized in detail and likely denies the reality of international power relations inherent in international assistance. Nonetheless, while some have argued that aid can only incentivize economic reform in recipient countries where donors do not pursue strategic interests (Bearce & Tirone, cited in Wright & Winters 2010), the authors argue that, in the case of Brazil, the official narrative of solidarity as the motor of engagement misses the recognition that motivations of altruism and national interest are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This position seems to be shared by Burges (2012), who sees no contradiction between the provision of development aid and the pursuit of strategic interests of a diverse nature.

Scholars have generally acknowledged the relevance of geopolitical and economic interests behind Brazil’s development cooperation (Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009; Burges 2012; Cabral & Weinstock 2010; Inoue & Vaz 2012; White 2013; Stolte 2012; Visentini 2009). In most cases, however, authors provide little empirical ground for their claims. Such limitations are clearly related to the lack of aggregate figures on Brazilian development assistance (Burges 2012; Cabral & Weinstock 2010; Inoue & Vaz 2012), which led authors to focus on the political aspects of Brazil’s move to Africa. Most commonly, researchers emphasized initiatives such as the frequency of visits payed by Brazilian heads of state and high officers to African states (Stolte 2012), and the amount of recently opened Brazilian embassies on the continent (Inoue & Vaz 2012). Yet, more recently figures on Brazilian development assistance to Africa have been included into the aid statistics offered by AidData.org (Tierney et al. 2011), allowing for a systematic and a more precise analysis of Brazil’s development cooperation to Africa.

In this light, this work will make use of the data on Brazil’s technical assistance provision from 2003 to 2010 so as to shed light on the motivations behind Brazil’s increased presence in Africa in the given period. In addition, interviews are carried out

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with a range of actors involved in the formulation and implementation of Brazilian development cooperation. I will attempt at identifying the main drivers of Brazil’s interest in the continent and seek to determine whether Brazil is different from other traditional and emerging donor countries. In doing so, I also intend to confirm or refute the previous findings gathered by previous work on this topic.

3. Theoretical Framework

The following sections present the theoretical framework for the empirical analysis pursued in this research project. The first section outlines some of the main arguments and assumptions on Brazil’s development assistance in Africa. This will be done by using some of the findings offered by the academic literature. The second section builds up the hypotheses that can be derived from these arguments. The third section of this chapter is dedicated to outlining the institutional background within which Brazilian development assistance is conceived and delivered. This is pertinent as it will provide the reader with important information on the mode of operation of Brazil’s strategy.

3.1. The Arguments: plausible motivations for Brazil’s development assistance

While there is still no certainty regarding the nature of the Brazil’s engagement and the factors guiding its choice of partners in the region, previous analyses provide starting points for plausible answers about the motivations behind Brazil’s development efforts. On the one hand, according to the country’s official narrative on development assistance, Brazil’s development efforts follow the logic of solidarity and South-South cooperation and are rather detached from geopolitical and economic interests (Inoue & Vaz 2012; IPEA 2013). This is reflected in government documents and reports issued by some of Brazil’s official research institutes. The reports published by government funded institutes such as the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA 2013) acknowledge that technical assistance promotes and expands Brazil's presence abroad. Nonetheless, such reports emphasize the deployment of assistance programs based on the demand of potential recipient countries as a particular feature of Brazil’s development approach (IPEA 2013; The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

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In addition, the Brazilian government underlines the importance of the country’s principles of South-South cooperation, namely horizontality, partnership, mutual benefits, non-conditionality, ownership, shared experiences, and aversion to a 'one size fits all approach', among others (Paz 2015). Brazil sees itself as a partner capable of contributing to the transference or joint creation of solutions for problems of developing countries facing common challenges. Furthermore, it does not consider its practices as characterizing it as a donor country. The principles guiding the country’s engagement and the practices following from these principles are believed to generate a development approach that stands in contrast to the practices of traditional donors. Brazil thus builds on the cultural, institutional, socioeconomic and geographic affinities that facilitate the interaction between Brazil and many African countries, and are represented as a significant difference between the former and traditional donors (IPEA 2013; The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

In a similar manner, White (2013) has argued that the Brazilian approach, also referred to as the “Brazilian way”, differs from both traditional donor approaches and other emerging countries’ approaches to development. However, for the author this difference is believed to be founded in the so called “seamless link (…) between business interests

and development initiatives” (White 2013, p. 118) that became the remarkable feature of

the country’s efforts on the continent during the government of Lula da Silva (2003-2010). For the author, Brazil has manufactured a unique approach to development that comprises diplomatic efforts, strategic commercial interests, and development cooperation. The country’s key commercial players are understood to have adopted development in the region as a sustainable commercial interest and to be actively engaged in promoting this interest.

If this line of argument were to be true, Brazil’s development activities in the region should follow a pattern of high commercial interests leading to elevated development investments. The association between development and commercial interests would mean that most Brazilian aid is deployed to the countries with which Brazil maintains the most significant commercial ties.

Moreover, authors such Burges (2014) contend that the foreign policy logic behind Brazil’s development assistance is alike to that found in DAC-member countries. Similarly to White (2013), Burges understands the country’s development assistance as

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part of its strategy for internal, long-term development and the internationalization processes of national firms. However, despite the differences in terminology and the resistance to being framed as an aid donor, the author argues that Brazil’s technical assistance “falls well within the bounds of DAC (2008) definitions of ODA” and that its involvement in Africa is similar in many aspects to the development cooperation as provided by traditional donors (Burges 2014, p. 356).

Such an interpretation means that, in spite of its resistance to complying with traditional aid structures such as the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action, Brazil might have followed the trend adopted by traditional donors in the past years, prioritizing the quality of governance as criterion for the deployment of aid (Marysse, Ansoms & Cassimon 2006).

This might seem unlikely at first sight, especially in light of Brazil’s refusal to attach its assistance programs to political conditionality. And yet, some authors have pointed out that, despite the official refusal to the establishment of formal, political conditions for the delivery of aid, Brazil has engaged in supporting democratic processes such as the implementation of elections in African partner countries (Paz 2015). Consequently, the importance attributed by Brazil to the quality of governance might be more significant than expected.

3.2. Hypotheses

Building on the insights from the existing literature, official documents, interviews, and data on aid deployed by Brazil to African countries, this work seeks to investigate whether Brazil is a need-driven donor (H1), a commercial interest-based donor (H2), or a good-governance driven donor (H3). This will be evaluated by matching three sets of data. First, aid flows deployed to each African aid recipient between 2003 and 2010 will be combined with indicators on poverty, measured as average income levels, in recipient countries. Second, aid flows for the mentioned time frame will be matched with data on bilateral trade between Brazil and its respective commercial partners in Africa. Finally, the same aid flows will be juxtaposed with indicators on the quality of governance and institutions in the respective recipient countries.

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The above mentioned analysis is then expected to evolve into three competing, eventually complementary and falsifiable hypotheses. The empirical investigation will thus provide for a set of implications arising from each hypothesis. In the first scenario (H1), more development aid will be found to be directed to those countries with the lowest income levels, revealing Brazil’s development cooperation to be driven by the level of need in the recipient countries. As Brazil claims to deploy development assistance according to the demand of its partner countries, this trend would grant the country’s official narrative strong credibility. In the second scenario (H2), more development aid will be found to be directed towards the countries with which Brazil maintains the highest bilateral trade flows. This result would indicate that, despite its claims to solidarity among developing nations, Brazil’s behavior is rather driven by economic interests. In the third scenario (H3), aid is expected to be deployed to the countries with the highest levels of good-governance indicators, suggesting that Brazil’s development cooperation has followed the trend of some traditional donors of “rewarding” the quality of institutions in recipient countries.

Table 1 summarizes the hypotheses that will be tested in the empirical analysis.

Table 1 - Hypotheses

Motivation Hypothesis

Need-based donor

H1: A higher amount of aid is directed at countries with the lowest income levels.

Commercial Interest-based

donor

H2: A higher amount of aid is deployed to the countries with which Brazil maintains its most significant commercial relations.

Good-governance driven donor

H3: A higher amount of aid is directed at countries with the highest good-governance indicators.

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3.3. The institutional characteristics of Brazilian Development Assistance: official and non-official actors

In order to make sense of the deployment of Brazilian development assistance to Africa and of the motivations driving Brazil’s engagement, one must understand the role of the institutions responsible for designing and delivering assistance. Scholars have successfully determined the components of Brazil’s engagement. These are believed to comprise the diplomatic staff, public and private enterprises, and technical and research organizations (White 2013; The World Bank & IPEA 2011; Inoue & Vaz 2012; Barbosa, Narciso & Biancalana 2009). In addition, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) has been widely acknowledged as part of this strategy by backing the international operations of Brazil’s big commercial players by means of credit lines (Stolte 2012; White 2013; Inoue & Vaz 2012; Neto 2013). The following sections will outline the most important institutional components of Brazilian Development Assistance. Given the main goals of this study, most attention will be directed at ABC and the public institutions involved in implementing official development cooperation.

There are four primary activities comprising Brazilian development cooperation (IPEA 2013; Paz 2015): funds for international organizations, scholarship programs, humanitarian relief and technical cooperation. Among these, technical cooperation is estimated to make up the most significant share of Brazilian foreign aid (Burges 2012; Sousa 2010). Therefore, this section will prioritize the design and delivery of technical cooperation programs.

3.3.1. Brazilian Cooperation Agency and other government related actors

The Brazilian Cooperation Agency is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was created in 1987. Its staff is made up primarily of career diplomats and the organization holds the formal responsibility of coordinating Brazil’s development efforts abroad. By building on the experience of pre-existing institutions, the agency aims at transferring experiences acquired by Brazilian bureaucrats in the past decades to partner countries. This concept is explained in a report issued by one of Brazil’s government funded research institutes:

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"All this effort is implemented mainly by employees of the federal public administration along with their foreign counterparts, in the understanding, reflection and joint search for solutions to development challenges in partner countries. In addition to formulas, methods, instruments and policy guidelines, they bring and reflect on the history, culture and the intrinsic values of public governance in Brazil" (IPEA 2013, p. 25).

The sectors targeted by assistance projects follow the area of expertise held by the actors responsible for designing and delivering the assistance. These include a wide range of organizations such as the already mentioned EMBRAPA, FIOCRUZ, and SENAI. ABC coordinates the requests for assistance received by potential partners with the expertise of the respective domestic institution. According to ABC, the list of Brazilian entities partnering with the Agency in South-South cooperation currently comprises 335 institutions (ABC 2016). Figure 2 highlights the sectors prioritized by Brazil in its development activities in Africa and reveals an emphasis on agriculture, education, and health.

Figure 2 - Brazilian Technical Assistance Expenditures in Africa by Sector 2000-2014 Source: ABC 2016. Agriculture 33,35 Education 22,98 Health 15,46 Social Development 4,01 Cities 3,99 Defense 3,77 Culture 2,8 Environment 2,8 Sports 2,55 Public Administration 1,89 Commerce and Industry

1,28 Fishing 1,16 Livestock 0,79 Others 3,16 8.28

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At the same time, as has been argued by authors such as Paz (2015) and Cabral and Weinstock (2010), the fragmented model leads Brazil’s assistance programs to be relatively decentralized. Development projects are financed with resources from its diverse partner organizations. In 2010, for instance, Brazilian technical cooperation was implemented with budgetary resources of 44 institutions of the federal public administration (IPEA 2013). Although there have been ongoing efforts to concentrate most of the projects under the lead of ABC (The World Bank & IPEA 2011), the Agency’s jurisdiction is restricted to technical cooperation inflows and outflows, leaving a series of other assistance programs under the competency of ministries such as the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Treasury, and other private and public organizations.

It should also be noted that, as the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ technical arm, ABC is directly dependent on the Ministry’s overall budget and follows the foreign policy directives established for the Ministry (Souza 2010). Although the Agency was first established in 1987, the operationalization of its assistance projects still faces constraints imposed by the lack of an adequate institutional framework. As the Brazilian constitution does not allow for direct transfers of resources to foreign countries, ABC channels its aid by means of contributions made to multilateral institutions and trilateral, bilateral and regional agreements. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) appears to play a central role in this redistribution (ABC 2016; OECD & WTO 2011). At the same time as this institutional architecture makes the provision of aid more difficult, however, it provides the country with a justification for its resistance to being framed as “donor country”.

In addition to the modalities mentioned in the introduction to this section, the study carried out in 2013 by the government-related IPEA (2013) points to the increasing interest developed countries and international organizations have shown towards the possibility of engaging in trilateral cooperation projects with Brazil. Trilateral or triangular cooperation arrangements are described as attempts at combining the financial capabilities of developed countries with Brazil's comparative advantages – for instance, technical capabilities of Brazilian institutions, cultural and linguistic similarities with recipient countries, and the approaches of horizontal exchange. For the

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Brazilian government, however, the effectiveness of such agreements depends upon the respect for the principles of Brazilian cooperation. Here, the study lists request-driven cooperation, non-conditionality, use of local resources and non-profit.

In 2010, Brazil maintained trilateral cooperation projects with Japan, Germany, the United States, Italy, Egypt, and Australia. Furthermore, there are trilateral agreements with traditional international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (IPEA 2013). The increase in trilateral cooperation agreements thus adds relevance to the research conducted in this study, given its interest in shedding light on the differences between the Brazilian approach and the approaches adopted by traditional donors.

3.3.2. Private Enterprises and BNDES

Brazil’s economic presence in Africa has been led by big businesses and governmental loans provided primarily by the BNDES. Brazilian businesses first entered the African continent in the 1970s and operate mainly in infrastructure, mining and energy in Sub-Saharan Africa (Stolte 2012). In some cases, the operations of these businesses on the continent therefore have a history of over 30 years. And yet, the mid-2000s saw a significant increase in the number of companies as well as an increase of investments by those companies that were already present in the region (The World Bank & IPEA 2011). Simultaneously, trade between Brazil and Africa increased from US$ 4.3 billion in 2002 to US$ 27.6 billion in 2011 (Schlesinger 2013).

While other Brazilian banks such as Banco do Brasil and Bradesco also announced support to the operations of Brazilian companies on the continent, BNDES’ role is preeminent – the state-owned bank increased its disbursements drastically since it began providing big Brazilian corporations with bellow market credit lines in the mid-2000s. According to the World Bank and the government-related IPEA (2011), there is a trend towards consolidation of a consistent strategy for the activities of BNDES in Africa, with the support of Brazilian foreign policy. This effort is believed to have been strengthened since 2003, acquiring a technical and increasingly harmonized nature. In a similar manner, Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF), another Brazilian state-owned bank, runs operations in Angola and Mozambique through technical cooperation projects implemented by ABC in the housing sector.

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In addition, Brazilian companies have been considered to adopt business strategies that foster development in host countries and stand in contrast to the approaches by other donor countries (White 2013). In some cases, locals are hired on all levels of project management and execution, favoring the development of local capacity, and improving the quality of services and outputs (The World Bank & IPEA 2011). For instance, Odebrecht – Angola's largest private sector employer – claims to hire locals for strategic positions (Stuenkel 2013; White 2013). Also Vale asserts to be committed to contributing to local development by hiring locals, which are said to make up about 85% of its workforce (Vale 2016). In light of these practices, authors have argued that Brazil’s businesses have explicitly followed an agenda in line with the country’s foreign policy directives (Schlesinger 2013; White 2013).

4. Empirical Analysis

The following sections outline the methodological aspects of this research project. First, I will present the sources of my indicators – used in the quantitative analyses – and discuss their operationalization. Then, I will explain the methods used to answer the research question: a mixed-methods approach.

4.1. Operationalization of the Indicators

To empirically test my hypotheses derived in the preceding chapter, I operationalize the key variables introduced in the hypotheses as measurable indicators. As for my dependent variable, aid per capita, I used the definition of technical cooperation as defined by the OECD:

“grants to nationals of aid recipient countries receiving education or training at home or abroad, and (b) payments to consultants, advisers and similar personnel as well as teachers and administrators serving in recipient countries, (including the cost of associated equipment)” (OECD 2001).

This is pertinent as technical assistance provided by Brazil through non-official channels has been estimated to make up a significant share of its total development expenditures (The Economist 2010; Souza 2010). Non-official channels – considered horizontal channels by Brazil – include, for instance, Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC). This mechanism was first established by the Buenos

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Aires Plan for Action of 1978 and was later framed as South-South Cooperation (The World Bank & IPEA 2011).

Loose coordination of data collection and dispersed delivery of assistance have hindered the determination of accurate aggregate data on the country’s development budget (Inoue & Vaz 2012), therefore making empirical work on the topic more difficult. However, in spite of Brazil being a non-DAC provider of development assistance and not reporting its aid expenditures to the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), AidData.org has already included some of the country’s data into its main AidData portal. Therefore, I will make use of the data offered by AidData.org (Tierney et al. 2011).

In order to better grasp the impact of aid on recipients with very diverse geographic and socioeconomic characteristics – that is, size of their territories, their economies and populations – the total aid expenditures offered by AidData.org have been converted into aid per capita. This was done by dividing the aid flows received in each year by the population of the recipient in the respective year.

The key independent variables that determine the deployment of Brazilian technical assistance are the recipient countries’ need, Brazil’s commercial interests, and the recipient countries’ quality of governance. Recipients’ need is measured by level of poverty, using the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita6, as provided by the World Bank (2016).

Commercial interest is measured by examining bilateral trade. The information on bilateral trade flows7 between Brazil and Africa will be based on data provided by the Brazilian Ministério da Indústria, Comércio Exterior e Serviços (MDIC) (MDIC 2016). While the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) is also an important indicator of the commercial interests, there are only sparse data on Brazilian FDI to Africa, impeding the inclusion of this information into the analysis.

The quality of governance is measured using the Rule of Law estimates provided by the World Bank. The Rule of Law estimates capture perceptions of the confidence agents have in the rules of society, with an emphasis for the quality of contract enforcement,

6_{GDP per capita in constant 2005 US-Dollars.} 7_{Bilateral trade in constant US-Dollars.}

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property rights, the police, the courts, and the likelihood of crime and violence (The World Bank 2016). Although governance indicators have received increased attention as criteria for aid disbursement, there is yet disagreement with regards to the exact meaning of good-governance, understood as either technocratic or political governance (Hout, cited in Marysse, Ansoms & Cassimon 2006). However, this research will be based on the technocratic governance indicators provided by the World Bank. Table 2 summarizes the operationalization of the indicators carried out in the quantitative analysis.

Table 1 - Operationalization of Hypotheses

Key Concept Operationalization Data and Sources

H1: Need-based donor Income level GDP per capita from World Bank

H2: Commercial

Interest-based donor Bilateral Trade

Overall trade flows between Brazil and African

recipient countries as provided by the Brazilian

MDIC H3: Good-governance

driven donor Good-governance levels

Rule of Law estimates provided by the World

Bank

4.2. Methods: A Mixed Method Approach

The question whether Brazil’s development aid is driven by the need of the recipient countries, the economic relevance of its respective development partners, or the quality of governance of the recipient countries will be pursued by a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods.

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Given the availability of the data on Brazil’s technical assistance, my quantitative analysis covers the time period between 2003 and 2010. Yet, I believe this period is highly relevant in exploring the motivations behind the Brazilian development cooperation in Africa. This is because it was during the government of Lula da Silva (2003-2010) that the boost of the relationship with Africa became a core foreign policy objective. In addition, Brazil became a provider – no longer being only a recipient – of development cooperation in 2005-2006 (The World Bank & IPEA 2011). Figure 3 highlights the increase in development assistance expenditures during the government of Lula da Silva.

Figure 3 - Evolution of ABC's financial execution

Note: the graphic presents the evolution of ABC’s financial execution. The yearly values are the financial addition of ABC’s executive budget, of the transfers to international organizations and of the resources deployed by Brazilian governmental institutions for the execution of technical cooperation actions by ABC. Source: ABC 2016.

2,022,256 3,242,264 3,342,588 1,974,424 _{722,017 905,668} 5,308,508 3,660,637 7,001,556 19,383,814 37,819,613 27,003,724 19,812,763 13,942,230 7,099,064 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

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My quantitative analysis focuses on the association between the socioeconomic characteristics of the recipient countries and the actual amount of Brazilian development assistance received by them. More specifically, I examine whether more aid goes 1) to countries that are more in need of assistance (i.e., those with lower income levels), 2) to countries with which Brazil maintains stronger bilateral trade relations, or 3) to the ones with superior quality of institutions (i.e., higher good-governance indicators as rule of law).

Once the pattern of aid flows has been established, I will move on to the qualitative analysis, based on interviews. Semi-structured interviews were carried out over skype with a Brazilian government official and African development workers who have taken part in Brazilian projects on the continent. In addition, a personal open interview was held with members of a traditional donor country organization – namely, the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). Together, the interviews offer important insights into the various perspectives on Brazil’s strategy. The questions used in the interviews were developed based on the literature reviewed for this study and on the institutional mechanisms of Brazilian technical cooperation. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis will draw from a combination of academic articles, policy papers, reports issued by the Brazilian government and official research institutes, and news articles.

All interviews carried out for the qualitative analysis were held in Portuguese. In most cases, the interviews were recorded – with the consent of the interviewees – for the sake of transcription and data storage. By choosing representatives of distinct functions, namely state officials and development workers with different backgrounds and affiliations, I hope to broaden the perspectives used to complement the quantitative findings and reduce the chances of favoring the position of specific stakeholders at the expense of others. The selection of the interviewees thus reflects the diversity of stakeholders involved in Brazilian development assistance.

Nelci Peres Caixeta, coordinator for Africa, Asia and Oceania in the Department for Technical Cooperation with Developing Countries (CGPD) of ABC, represents the government’s stance on Brazil’s approach to development assistance. Boubacar Diombana and Celso Mutadiua, on the other hand, are local members of staff in Brazilian development projects in Africa. They are at the intersection between Brazil’s government institutions – in these cases, ABC and EMBRAPA – active in development

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projects and local institutions involved in the implementation of these projects. Boubacar Diombana is financial and administrative manager at the Project Cotton-4+Togo branch office in Mali. Project Cotton-Cotton-4+Togo is implemented by ABC in cooperation with EMBRAPA in Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, and more recently Chad. It is an agricultural project targeting the increase of productivity in the cotton production of the recipient countries and exists since 2009. Celso Mutadiua is an agronomist working as local technical coordinator in the Mozambique branch of Project Shire Zambezi, which has its headquarters in Tete and Guru, Mozambique. The project is implemented by ABC in cooperation with EMBRAPA and targets the increase of productivity and sustainability in local cotton production in Mozambique and Malawi. It should also be noted that Mutadiua has experience with traditional donor countries and trilateral cooperation projects, having worked with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the European Community, and with projects implemented by ABC in cooperation with JICA.

In addition, a personal open interview was held with four members – two Dutch and two Brazilians – of the Dutch Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). The interview aimed at hearing the position of development workers who are not associated to ABC, representing the practices of the Netherlands as a traditional donor country. Moreover, KIT’s stance is particularly relevant as the organization runs agricultural projects in many of the countries targeted by Brazilian development cooperation. For the sake of safeguarding their positions, the participants will be kept in anonymity.

I believe that by emphasizing the practices adopted in agricultural projects, important lessons can be drawn from Brazil’s development assistance projects in their entirety. This methodology is supported by the fact that, as has been demonstrated in figure 2, agriculture has accounted for 33.35% of Brazil’s overall development budget.

The next chapter is divided into the quantitative and the qualitative analyses. First, I will present the quantitative findings. Then, the results of the qualitative part will complement the quantitative results.

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5. Testing the hypotheses

The analysis of Brazilian assistance flows suggests that Brazil has a slight preference for the countries with which it maintains stronger bilateral trade relations. Table 3 contains the results of the linear regression analysis based on the data as outlined in the methods section.

Table 2 - Regression Results

Dependent variable: Aid per capita

(1) (2) (3)

GDP Per Capita -1.31e-06

(1.79e-06)

Bilateral Trade 1.23e-11*

(2.81e-12) Rule of Law 0.009066 (0.0078597) Constant 0.0222592* (0.0059383) 0.0111686* (0.0033387) 0.0258294* (0.007302) Observations 301 280 308 R2 0.0018 0.0644 0.0043 Note: *p<0.05

The regression analysis shows that Hypothesis 1 does not hold. When controlled for income levels – understood as GDP per capita – the effect on aid is not statistically significant. In other words, the level of income – considered as indicative of the level of “need” a recipient country experiences – does not have an impact on the deployment of aid by Brazil. If assumed that the need of recipient countries stands, to some degree, for the likelihood of such a country to demand Brazilian aid, this result would suggest that

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Brazil’s official discourse is not entirely consistent with the actual choice of recipient countries.

Hypothesis 2, on the other side, is confirmed by the analysis. Although the effect is marginal, bilateral trade is an independent variable that has a statistically significant effect on the dependent variable, aid per capita. This result indicates that recipient countries engaged in more bilateral trade with Brazil might be more likely to benefit from the country’s technical assistance programs. The result thus suggests that Brazil’s behavior as a donor country resembles the behavior of traditional donors, some of which have been considered to use foreign aid as a mechanism for economic expansion – for instance, opening of emerging markets and securing of access to raw materials (Easterly 2006; Moyo 2009; cited in Burges 2014).

Hypothesis 3 has not been confirmed. The effect of rule of law on the deployment of Brazilian development assistance does not present statistical significance. This result suggests that Brazil does not have considerations for the quality of rule of law in recipient countries. It is worth noting that the idea of non-conditionality is embedded in the principles guiding Brazil’s larger foreign policy strategy, such as non-intervention and respect to sovereignty, which the country strongly advocates for in international fora. In this sense, the refusal to impose political conditionality on recipients is coherent with its diplomatic tradition (Souza 2010). For answering the research question, this finding thus has two main implications. First, it supports the official discourse as ABC claims not to have preferences when choosing partner countries and strongly emphasizes the inexistence of political conditionality. Thereby, it highlights the singularity of Brazil’s approach as a provider of development assistance. Second, it puts Brazil in contrast to some traditional donors, which have attributed increasing importance to the levels of good-governance in recipient countries in order to assure for the effectiveness of aid (Marysse, Ansoms & Cassimon 2006; Speck 2003).

In light of these results, the following chapter – dedicated to the qualitative analysis – seeks to complement the assumptions that can be derived from the quantitative findings by means of the responses obtained in the interviews.

Brazil in Africa : between natural partnership for development and interests of an emerging power