New Development Encounters: China and Brazil in African Agriculture

Ian Scoones, Lídia Cabral and Henry Tugendhat

IDS Bulletin, 2013, vol. 44, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade deals and commercial investment. Our focus is on the ‘encounters’ that occur during negotiations and the intersection of wider framing discourses with practices on the ground in particular projects. Brazilian and Chinese domestic political dynamics, competing social imaginaries and histories of agrarian change all shape development cooperation. Meanwhile, African governments are not just passive recipients; they exert agency in negotiations, trading off different players. Outcomes depend on the particular context, and the new aid and investment scene in African agriculture is highly varied, presenting opportunities as well as challenges for the future.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/idsb.2013.44.issue-4

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:idsxxx:v:44:y:2013:i:4:p:1-19

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in IDS Bulletin from Blackwell Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().