Rising Powers in African agriculture: Are China and Brazil bringing new paradigms to agricultural development cooperation?

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China and Brazil are not only emerging as major new players in international development cooperation in Africa; along with other Rising Powers, they are also claiming to be working in a new way, characterised by solidarity, mutual learning and "win-win" exchanges rather than conditionality, control and one-way knowledge transfer. Some claim that this amounts to a "new paradigm", contrasted with the approaches followed over recent decades by the established donor countries (many of which are former colonial powers). This study will examine these issues in the agricultural development cooperation sector, which is critically important for sustainable development and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa - as well as for the UK, which is both a major provider of aid to African agriculture (whether directly or through international organisations like the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) and a major consumer of African agricultural produce. In agriculture as in other sectors, the UK shares with the Rising Powers a perception that Africa is an important source of primary resources and growing markets, which means that understanding the changing landscape of agricultural development cooperation on the continent is important for the UK economically as well as foreign policy interests.The project will be carried out through an innovative international partnership. This will connect researchers from institutions in the UK and a range of African countries, who are already linked through the well-established and influential IDS-led Future Agricultures Consortium, with colleagues from China and Brazil who are actively engaged in studying their countries' new development cooperation engagements. The proposed research will begin with a mapping phase that will generate the first comprehensive geo-referenced database of Chinese and Brazilian agricultural development cooperation projects in Africa. This will be followed by in-depth case studies of a sample of these projects taking place in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The case studies will examine the ways in which experience and expertise from China and Brazil engage with the realities of African agriculture and the perspectives of African scientists and farmers. Comparative analysis across projects, countries and types of intervention will address the question of whether "new paradigms" of development cooperation are actually emerging, and assess their implications for the future of aid policy. This in turn will contribute to an ongoing process of engagement with policy processes in Africa, Brazil, China and the UK, as well as in key international fora, including the discussions that will take place under the UK and Russian Presidencies of the G8 in 2013 and 2014 on the future of development beyond the expiry in 2015 of the Millennium Development Goals.This project addresses issues raised under all the themes of the Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures Call.