Re-Thinking Recipient Agency in South-South Cooperation: Strategies of Contestation, Strategies of Transformation and the South’s Own View of Development

Abstract

Emerging donors have paid little attention to recipient agency in South-South Cooperation (SSC), instead emphasizing the supposedly horizontal character of South-South relations and the respect for (governmental) sovereignty. Focusing on the ProSavana, the Brazil-Japan-Mozambique large-scale agricultural project that was supposed to transform the Mozambican savannah into a commodities exporter, this article explores the political battle between the proponents of the ProSavana and the transnational movement of peasants that contested it. Drawing on the theory of discourse, the article offers a reconceptualization of agency in SSC as the capacity and ability (of indigenous populations) to transform Northern hegemonic discourses (embodied by the ProSavana) and replace them with the South’s own view of development. Based on similarity claims between Brazil and Mozambique’s experience with agricultural development, the peasants’ movement was successful in contesting the project by discursively linking ‘ProSavana’ with ‘land grabbing’ and ‘food insecurity’ but was not able to promote a more propositional discourse that would replace the ProSavana. My analysis shows that successful strategies of transformation will depend on the mobilization of discursive resources that resonate with the greater community as a ‘common good’. The article draws broader implications for movements that seek to contest large-scale (agricultural) projects.

Keywords:

• ProSavana
• South-South cooperation
• Brazil
• Mozambique
• discourse theory
• agency
• agricultural development

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank all the respondents who agreed to take part in this research, the editor of JDS and anonymous reviewers whose feedback helped make this article better. I'd also like to thank Capes for the funding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I am aware that the term ‘recipient’ is not used by the SSC discourse, and is often avoided by the literature, since the terminology is usually applied to/by North-South aid. But assuming SSC is not based on a perfectly horizontal relationship, I use the term ‘SSC recipient’ to refer to the partner who is at the recipient end of the project.

2 See also interviews 10, 11 and 12 with Mozambique NGO representatives.

3 Interviews 23, 24, 25, 26, MASA reps., Mozambique, 2018.

4 Interview 37, MSCS rep., Mozambique, 2018.

5 For the various examples of agribusiness projects backed by the World Bank and international donors such as USAID, see Sabaratnam (2017).

6 In February 2020 the Government of Mozambique restructured the MASA and changed its name to Ministério da Agricultura e Desenvolvimento Rural (MADER).

7 Interview 1, Embrapa personnel, Brazil, September 2017.

8 Both ActionAid and Oxfam later declined to be part of the ‘No to ProSavana’ campaign as they did not reject the project as a whole, but only demanded some changes.

9 Interview 10, NGO representative, Mozambique, February 2018

10 Interview 11, NGO representative, Mozambique, February 2018.

11 Interview 11, NGO representative, Mozambique, February 2018.

12 Interview 12, NGO representative, Mozambique, February 2018.

13 Brazil was removed from the UN Hunger Map in 2014, which was mostly attributed to social policies such as Fome Zero (Zero Hunger, in English).

Interview 12, NGO representative, Mozambique, February 2018.

14 Interview 10, Mozambique, March 2018.

15 Interview 11, NGO representative, Mozambique, February, 2018.

16 Interview 1, 2, Embrapa representatives, Brazil, September 2017.

17 Here, ‘small-holder farmer’ and ‘peasant’ are used interchangeably, although I am aware not all peasants possess land.

18 Interview 33, UNAC representative, Mozambique, March, 2018.

19 Interview 33, UNAC representative, Mozambique, March, 2018

20 Interviews 7, Embrapa rep., 11, Embrapa rep., 18, MRE rep., 19, MRE rep. Brazil, 2017.

21 Interview 18, MRE rep., Brazil, 2017.

22 Interview 1, Embrapa personnel, Brazil, 2017.

23 Interviews 23, 24, 25, 26, MASA reps., Mozambique, 2018.

24 Interview 24, MASA rep., Mozambique, 2018.

25 Unlike in Brazil, land in Mozambique belongs to the State and cannot be privatized.

26 Interview 33, UNAC rep., Mozambique, 2018.

27 Interview 37, MSCS rep., Mozambique, 2018.

28 Idem

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education, Capes (Coordenação de aperfeiçoamento de pessoal de nível superior), as part of the full doctorate scheme.