BRICS, sub-imperialism and education in Mozambique

ABSTRACT

Are changing geo-political dynamics, and an increasingly multi-polar world, significant for education? We explore this question by engaging a debate on whether BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) can be considered as a form of sub-imperialism or not. We use a limited form of the concept and focus on connections between the BRICS countries and education in southern Africa - specifically South Africa and Mozambique. Drawing on selected secondary and primary sources, we argue that while South Africa fulfils some of the criteria of a ‘dependent regional sub-centre with influence,' relationships in education between BRICS members and Mozambique are not extensive, although displaying similar characteristics to the `aid colonialism' of traditional donors. The article explores modalities of involvement and shows that even in the case of South Africa educational relationships do not yet appear to extend to policy. However, policy accommodation is a key dimension of these relationships.

摘要: 地缘政治动态的不断变化以及世界的日益多极化，如金砖国家（巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非）最近的扩员，对教育有重要影响吗？我们通过讨论金砖国家是否可被视为一种次帝国主义的形式来探讨这一问题，并使用这一概念的有限形式来探讨教育中的关系。我们重点关注金砖国家与南部非洲（特别是南非和莫桑比克）的教育之间的联系。通过参考选取的一、二手资料，我们认为，虽然南非符合“依附的有影响力的区域次中心”的一些指标，但金砖国家和莫桑比克教育之间的关系并不广泛，尽管（这一关系）呈现出类似于传统捐助方的“援助殖民主义”的特征。本文探讨介入的方式，并表明即使在南非，教育关系似乎也尚未延伸到政策层面。然而，政策适应是这些关系的一个关键维度。

KEYWORDS:

• BRICS
• sub-imperialism
• Southern Africa
• South Africa
• Mozambique
• education

关键词:

• 金砖国家
• 次帝国主义
• 南部非洲
• 南非
• 莫桑比克
• 教育

Introduction

What are the implications for education in an increasingly multi-polar world, in which both North–South and South–South relationships have become complicated by new geo-political alignments, represented in the role of relative newcomers such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)? This is one of the key questions facing education in Southern Africa. Although a growing body of literature has begun to examine the role of BRICS at a geopolitical level, examination of its role within education is more limited. We try to answer the question and enhance understanding through a closer examination of BRICS countries’ relationships with Mozambique, a country with a Portuguese colonial past and socialist post-independence legacy, and also neighbouring South Africa, a member of BRICS. We do so through examining the applicability of the concept of sub-imperialism, an important theoretical lens used in the broader political economic literature, analysis of data on student scholarships and flows and drawing on interviews conducted with managers of schools. And while we highlight the education initiatives of each of the BRICS countries in Mozambique, we pay particular attention to South Africa.

BRICS and sub-imperialism

In 2001, Jim O’Neill, then chair of Goldman Sachs Assets Management, invented the acronym BRIC to describe the so-called emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (O’Neill 2001). He predicted that they would emerge as major economies. These countries first met as a bloc in 2006. In 2011 South Africa was added to the group, making the acronym BRICS. In August 2023, at the 15th BRICS Summit, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been invited to join the organisation (Haffajee et al. 2023). Argentina later declined the invitation. What the role of the bloc, and/or of individual countries in the bloc, might be in a new multi-polar world is significant for understanding changing educational dynamics in particular contexts.

Several writers have already examined the extent to which BRICS has resulted in a radical turn in development or has reinforced neo-liberal trends (Taylor 2014; Carmody 2013, 2020). A more specific debate has focused on whether BRICS and individual countries within the bloc act as agents of imperialism, a new form of imperialism or chart a new path of cooperation. In focusing on South Africa's role as a sub-imperial power, Samson has usefully distinguished between two main approaches: the one represented by Lesufi (Lesufi 2004), which argues that South Africa acts as an imperial power, and the other, represented by Bond, (Bond 2004, 2005) that sees South Africa as a sub-imperial agent of American imperialism (Samson 2009, 93). Both, in her view, provide ahistorical theorisations and neglect the agency of the South African state and the role of capital in the South African state. She draws attention to the conceptualisations of sub-imperialism developed by the Brazilian dependency theorist Ruy Mauro Marini, working from the 1970s to 1990s (Marini 2022; Chilcote 2009; Valencia 2017b).

The key features of a sub-imperialist system, as developed by Marini, were summarised as occurring when (a)’The dependent country becomes a “regional sub-centre” whose influence is felt in the countries and systems around it’ (b)different bourgeois factions unify ‘by displacing internal contradictions’ – uniting across sometimes irreconcilable differences to play a sub-imperial role (c) ‘ … a specific national and sub-imperialist political ideological project’ is developed such as import-substitution-led industrialisation, developed in Brazil in the 1950s, and ‘reaching its zenith across Latin America with the neo-liberal policies of the early 1990s’ (d) ‘The formation of national capitalist monopolies or trusts … that follow the trail of those from the advanced countries,’ (e) ‘The simultaneous transfer of value from the sub-imperialist to the central countries, and appropriation of value and surplus value of the weakest countries by the sub-imperialist bourgeoisie for its own benefit’ (Marini 2022, 1977; Valencia 2017a, 2017b, 67–68)

The concept of sub-imperialism has been used mainly to signify the internationalisation of capital in ‘emerging’ or ‘late-developing’ economies, and its consequences (for example, Moldovan 2018 who has looked at Brazil; Uysal 2021 who has considered Turkey's sub-imperial role in sub-Saharan Africa). Bond has used the work of Rosa Luxembourg, Richard Harvey and Marini to develop the concept further with particular reference to the general African and specifically South African contexts (Bond 2004, 2005, 2013, 2017a). He borrows from Luxembourg the notion of the relationship between capitalism and its non-capitalist hinterlands – overaccumulation in the capitalist centre results in crisis and the impulse to externalize capital and financialize or restructure economies through the dominance of finance capital. This provides the condition for renewed imperialism with disastrous effects on the hinterland, manifested in super-exploitation.

Bond has argued that far from acting as a counter-weight to imperial powers such as the US, BRICS has effectively ‘accommodated imperialism’ and ‘re-legitimated neo-liberalism’ (Bond 2013, 251; see also 2017b, 2023; Garcia, Borba, and Bond 2021). It has ensured ‘regional geopolitical stability in areas suffering severe tensions’ and ‘advance(ed) the broader agenda of globalized neoliberalism, so as to legitimate deepened market access’ (Bond 2013). The overall role of sub-imperial regimes, in his view, is precisely this: ‘to lubricate, legitimize and extend neo-liberal political economy deeper into their regional hinterlands’ (Bond 2013). Despite very different material realities, and centripetal tendencies of capital accumulation and political tensions that exist both within and between members, their modes of engagement and investment ‘fits tightly’ within Western imperialism through an ‘amplified neoliberal multilateralism serving both BRICS and the West, the regional displacement of over-accumulated capital, financialisation, and persistent super-exploitative social relations’ (Bond 2023).

For Samson, this conceptualisation ‘results in problematic silences and exclusions’ (Samson 2009, 94), in particular of the ‘more nuanced social processes’ through which South Africa's current sub-imperial role is constituted – such as that in and through education. But it also, by the same token, invites analysis of the role of BRICS countries either as a bloc or individual countries as ‘regional sub-centres’ (see Valencia 2017a, 2017b, above). More than this, it raises questions about whether these educational initiatives and interventions are any different from those of traditional Western donors and what the modalities of a sub-imperial relationship would be in education.

Preceding but also deepening in the 1990s after the end of the first Cold War, the focus in scholarly writing on education has largely been on the globalised neo-liberalism and dominance of multilateral agencies based in the West in developing countries, resulting for some in ‘silences’ in comparative education (Kim 2023, 378–481; Cowen 2023; Brehm 2023; Sakata et al. 2023) This emphasis has very rarely extended to recognition of an increasingly multi-olar world, although regionalism and particularly African regional structures dependent on Western donors are recognised (Tikly and Dachi 2009; Robertson et al. 2007). In 2004, for example, Tikly characterised ‘the new imperialism’, in education as ‘a new imperialism of the West, specifically by the USA and its allies’ (Tikly 2004); development discourses that emerged after WWII are characteristic of it. These discourses are argued to have mobilised a binary of developed/underdeveloped that replaced the old colonizer/colonised opposition (Tikly 2004, 174) and have included the ‘extension of a particular western, liberal view of how populations ought to be governed … .’ (Tikly 2004, 178). The implications of this viewpoint for the erasure of race in international development discourses are explored in later work by Sriprakash, Tikly, and Walker (2020), Walker et al. (2023). Important as they are, particularly for their attention to the limits of the Washington and post-Washington consensus, these conceptualisations tend paradoxically to privilege a Western-centric perspective as they neglect the modalities of engagement of countries outside the West in Africa. If studies such as these tended to neglect relations reflecting a multi-polar world, more recent work on BRICS does not apply the concept of sub-imperialism, although Carmody does consider whether, for example, BRICS countries’ ‘socio-economic models have transferred to Africa’ or not (Anand, Fennell, and Comim 2021; see especially Carmody 2020, 351; Clark 2020; Dalcin et al. 2021; Potts 2020).

Applying the concept of sub-imperialism to education would however need to take account of two main critiques of the concept. The first questions the possibility of BRICS acting as a bloc and the usefulness of comparative work between its respective countries (Altbach and Bassett 2014; Oleksiyenko and Yang 2015). Different ‘spatialities, temporalities and sectoral engagements,’ it is argued, limit comparability (Carmody 2020). Differences between BRICS countries in terms of their histories and the size and nature of their economic, political and social systems mean that few common solutions are possible to the problems they face, as each differs. It also means that it is ‘difficult to come up with a single, unified theory of state behaviour for the BRICS’ (Carnoy et al. 2014, 361). Among the differences between each country that preclude research collaboration, are, for example, ‘language, financial commitment, inadequate regulatory frameworks and diverse interests’ (Rensburg, Motala, and David 2015b). Despite these reservations about the utility of bloc-comparisons, they continue to be done – whether at the level of foreign ministries, BRICS academic fora, individual intellectuals, trade unions, NGOs or grassroots activists (see, for example, Anand, Fennell, and Comim 2021). There is also a small literature on relationships between individual BRICS countries and Mozambique (see for example Loyalka et al. 2014; Rensburg, Motala, and David 2015a; Van der Merwe, Bond, and Dodd 2019). What has not been examined are specifically educational relations. Here, as will be shown later, aid relationships demonstrate significant similarities with those of Western powers.

The second critique, which takes South Africa as a case, has argued that South Africa's place in the world economy has changed significantly over time, that sub-imperialism does not accurately capture new post-apartheid directions and that East–South relationships now take precedence over North–South relationships (Martin 2013, 2019). South Africa's regional domination, Bill Martin maintains, lies in the past, in the imperial ambitions towards Mozambique of Rhodes and Jan Christian Smuts (See also Warhurst 1984, 93). If sub-imperialism is a project, he argues, ‘it should be evident in measures of regional domination and subordination to international partners … ’(Martin 2013, 167). And these, he maintains, do not exist. Martin argues that expansion into Africa has been marked by inequalities of investment and trade, but that these trends cannot be described in the same terms as classic models of imperialism, especially when increasing trade with the East and specifically China is taken into consideration (Martin 2013, 179).

Taking the first set of critiques into account, we do not intend to examine BRICS as a bloc, but rather to examine individual BRICS countries’ economic, aid and educational relationships with Mozambique, and especially those of South Africa. We share Martin’s (2019) position that ‘analogies to late nineteenth-century colonialism serve us poorly as do claims that South Africa and BRICS remain in subservient roles to the United States’ (Martin 2019, 68), and that ‘the centuries-old orientation to Europe and the United States is slowly being eclipsed’ (Martin 2019, 65). Like him, we acknowledge South Africa's regionally expanded role since 1994 and thus work with a more limited concept of sub-imperialism, that is, one of Valencia's conditions of a sub-imperial power, namely ‘a dependent country behaving as a regional sub-centre whose influence is felt in the countries and systems around it’ (Valencia 2017a, 2017b, 67). Although the other countries in BRICS are not in the same region as Mozambique and so might not fulfil that condition, it is still important to gauge their influence, alongside that of South Africa, specifically in and through education, to gain a sense of their role. Here, we find the literature that questions how different the BRICS relationships with poorer countries such as Mozambique are insightful.

South Africa as ‘dependent sub-regional centre of influence’

The ‘strategic coupling’ (Carmody 2017, 865) signified by BRICS has material underpinnings for South Africa. Although Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom remain important, China is now South Africa's single biggest trading partner, prompting some to speak of a ‘new dependency’ (Yong cited in Carmody 2017, 866). China imports raw materials (gold, diamonds, platinum) from South Africa and exports electro-mechanical products and appliances, textiles, and cereals. A comparison with the European Union showed that while two-way flows between South Africa and China were $56.3bn in 2022, with the deficit in China's favour, ‘the EU collectively accounted for $56.4bn worth of commerce with South Africa that year’. (Bloomberg News 2024, 8 April ) In 2023, South Africa's public debt was 73% of GDP, with debt-servicing costs crowding out social spending on basic services (National Treasury 2023, 12 & 15). Contributing to the debt are several large new loans taken out from the new (BRICS) Development Bank (Bradlow and Masamba 2024; Fabricius 2019). South Africa's growth trajectory is now dependent on both Chinese commodity prices and US interest rates (National Treasury 2023, 3). But dependence combines with the ‘externalisation’ of capital. Carmody argues that ‘the projection and penetration of Chinese and South African state/capital interests into southern Africa represents a form of geo-governance, where power is projected across borders’ (Carmody 2017, 868). South Africa's importance as a regional power is thus tightly linked to its entanglements in webs of what Taylor referred to as ‘diversified dependent’ relationships (Taylor 2014). The introduction of Mandarin Chinese as the second additional language into the South African schools’ curriculum following a Sino-South African cooperation agreement in 2014 is directly related to these closer economic ties (Department of Basic Education 2015).

Economic relations between South Africa and Mozambique have a relatively long history existing since at least the end of the nineteenth century (Covane 1989, 2001). van Onselen has argued that in this period Mozambique was subjected not to one but two colonisations, by both Portugal and South Africa, with the Sol do Save becoming ‘in effect South Africa's fifth province, the subject of a form of sub-imperialism both bedevilling and retarding state formation in a colony’ (Van Onselen 2023, 14). van Onselen shows how the modus vivendi entered into between Portugal and the Milner administration in the Transvaal in 1902 and succeeded in 1909 by the Mozambique Convention ‘secured the interests of the Mozambican administration and the Rand mine owners’ for migrant labour, building on earlier forms of slavery and indentured labour in Mozambique (Van Onselen 2023, 119). For most of the twentieth century, South Africa relied on Mozambican migrant labour to the mines. It was one of the most important social and economic ties between the two countries and a contributing factor to Mozambique's dependence on South Africa . Migrant labour to South African mines has continued after Mozambican independence in 1974 and South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994 (Covane 2001).

Recent analyses have however suggested that South African capitalism has changed from a reliance on Mozambican migrant labour to direct investment in the Mozambican economy within a broader strategy of investment policy in the Southern African region where South Africa has tried to establish its leadership as a benevolent hegemon through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) (Apollo 2015, 479; Castel-Branco 2002; Krapohl, Meissner, and Muntschick 2014). Through its trade and investment relations, Carmody has argued, South Africa ‘serves as a site from which globalisation is transmitted to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa’ (Carmody 2013, 48; see also Martin 2019). Here ‘its’ corporations – some such as Shoprite, a China–South Africa transnational corporation – play a particularly critical role. According to Carmody, eighty per cent of South African investment in least developed countries was directed to two projects in Mozambique in 2011 (Carmody 2013, 49; see below for further detail). South African corporate engagement in Mozambique has been extensive, evident in retail (Shoprite), insurance (Hollard), mobile telephony (Vocadom), banking (Standard Bank), tourism (Southern Sun), and agriculture and agri-processing focused on sugar (Tongaat Hulett, and Illovo), just to mention some of the most prominent (Martin 2019).

The two most prominent South African direct investments in Mozambique, made through licencing agreements with the Mozambican government, are the Mozal aluminium smelter and Sasol. These two companies represent South Africa's shift from migrant labour to mega-projects in terms of economic relations with Mozambique. In fact, both companies hold major relevance in the economic structure of Mozambique, with aluminium accounting (Mozal) for 22.6% of total exports and natural gas (Sasol) accounting for 17.1% of total exports in 2021 (Banco de Moçambique 2021). These are good signs for Mozambique. However, critics have raised concerns about the real contribution of these investments to the local economy. For example, it has been argued that although Mozal employs 1150 mostly local workers directly, it displays limited linkages with the rest of the economy – in spite of efforts to promote them (Aurre and Jaén 2019). A similar view is that the Mozal project contributes to economic growth measured from a GDP perspective, but also contributes to Mozambique's dependence on South African investment, resulting in the deepening of regional asymmetries and uneven development in Mozambique (Pretorius 2005). Generally, it appears that South African investment in Mozambique has few linkages with domestic businesses, and that employment creation under the so-called mega-projects is also fairly limited and short-term (Grobbelaar 2004, 63). More specifically, Mozal and Sasol, like many other non-South African foreign investments in Mozambique, had few linkages with the local economy in 2020 (Dietsche and Esteves 2020).

Trading relationships between South Africa and Mozambique exemplify South Africa's regional dominance. Between the 1990s and 2000s Mozambique's energy and gas were the main exports to South Africa. In 2001 energy accounted for 22 per cent of all exports to South Africa and in 2008 the figure of energy and gas exports rose to 76 per cent of all Mozambique's exports to South Africa (Castel-Branco 2010, 29). In general terms, from 2000 to 2020 Mozambique exports to South Africa were dominated by fuels: exports to South Africa rose from 17.51% to more than 70 per cent of total exports per year (WITS 2022). However, in the other direction, it was dominated by consumer goods; from 2000 to 2020 South Africa's exports to Mozambique represented a varying figure of 49.38% and 20.53% of total exports (WITS 2022). These figures are indicative of how South Africa has invested in the energy sector in Mozambique and how Mozambique depends on South African consumer goods. The figures also point to the different structures of the two economies: South Africa, a relatively highly industrialised economy in need of energy, and Mozambique, a less industrialised, and mainly an importer of basic goods. In Castel-Branco’s (2010) view, it would be argued that Mozambican export figures to South Africa reveal how the capitalist economy in Mozambique has become dependent on natural resources through intensive extraction although recent accounts suggest that some projects have been put on hold due to the fall of prices in the world market (Schubert 2020) or halted due to ongoing violence and terror in the Northern province of Cabo Delgado (Hernandez 2023).

South Africa thus appears to play a commanding role in the Mozambican economy. But what have the implications if any been for education? And what have the roles of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa taken not as a bloc, but as individual countries, been in education in Mozambique? Have these made significant inroads into patterns established in earlier eras? The question here is first whether the nature of involvement of BRICS countries (and especially South Africa) in Mozambican education, complements and extends economically dominant relationships or not, and second, whether these provide a different model to that of Western donors, and what the modalities of such a relationship would be. If the sub-imperialism no longer holds, as Martin (2013, 2019) maintains, and realignments are towards the East, how is this manifested in education?

Mozambique as case

To understand the modalities of relationships between BRICS countries and Mozambique in education, it is necessary to understand the broad contours of the history of Mozambican education. Educational change in Mozambique can be divided into two main periods: the colonial and post-independence periods. In his seminal work on the history of Mozambican education, Cross (Cross 1987, 2011) differentiates colonial education in Mozambique into three distinct periods: the pre-Salazar period, the period of (Portuguese) colonial fascism and the period of crisis of colonial fascism. It is also possible, however, to see the development of the structure and organisation of colonial education in Mozambique within the context and framework of a colonial capitalist economy. During these periods, South Africa did not play a direct role in Mozambican education. But its deep reach into Mozambican society through the extraction of unskilled migrant labour for the mines over a century must have contributed to the consolidation of layers of illiteracy within the broader population. For this population, distinct systems came into being under Portuguese colonialism for Africans, whites, Africans assimilated to Portuguese culture, Asians, and descendants of white fathers and African mothers. Schooling Africans to a low level was entrusted to Catholic missionaries while state schools were established for the other categories of people. This structure tells us about the differentiated purposes of education for each category of people, with implications for their place in society in terms of access to opportunities and resources. When the Salazar regime in Portugal came to an end in 1974, the new Portuguese authorities signed a peace agreement with FRELIMO that led to independence in 1975 (Errante and Jorge 2022).

Education in post-independence Mozambique can in turn be periodised into the 1975-1990 period and the 1990–2024 period. In the first period, Mozambique adopted a socialist political orientation; from 1990 it promoted neoliberal economic and social policies. In the first period, the principal educational initiatives undertaken by the new state included a literacy campaign, widening access to education, and the development of a new curriculum consistent with the intention to change mentalities and create the so-called New Man in the context of a socialist political orientation (Barnes 1982; Cross 2011; Errante and Jorge 2022). These ideals, as Piepiorka has argued, embraced ‘a modernity-driven discourse that would reflect Euro-socialist societal standards, composed of ‘modern’ norms and values, including the ideal of the nuclear family, monogamy, scientific knowledge, and rationality’ (Piepiorka 2020, 297). Transfer and borrowing of explicitly socialist ideas such as the Workers’ Faculties discussed by Miethe et al ended in the late 1980s when the Cold War came to an end and FRELIMO started to implement structural adjustment policies promoted by the IMF (Miethe et al. 2019; Piepiorka 2020, 308 & 311). The capitulation of Mozambique to the Bretton Woods Institutions in the 1980s paved the way for neoliberal economic policies with implications for education (Chissale and Cross 2014; Cross 2011). The liberalisation of education provision from 1990 onwards opened the door to private schooling for emerging middle-class families, even though the private schooling sector remains small (Unterhalter et al. 2020; Bennell 2021, 2022). As in the larger national economy, education became an area of investment by foreign-held institutions. Current assessments are that despite significantly expanded access to primary education since 1975, there is a ‘learning crisis’ or ‘schooling without learning’ with ‘weak state capacity’, ‘excessive’ dependence on external aid and limited community involvement in schools being seen as contributing to poor quality (Mário, Monjane, and Santos 2020).

To what extent have interventions and engagements in education by countries comprising BRICS shown continuities with earlier periods or across the East–West binary? In order to understand this, it is necessary briefly to consider the trends and patterns of BRICS aid in Mozambique more generally before focusing on education.

BRICS aid to Mozambique: general and educational

Studies which have examined empirical aid relationships between individual BRICS countries and Mozambique share similar conclusions: the ‘aid colonialism’ characterizing relationships between the West and Africa is also characteristic of aid relationships between BRICS countries and Africa. Dodd has shown how the economic relationship between BRICS and Africa has been characterised by rising debt levels and unequal trade relations (Dodd 2019), Naidu and Herman have argued that China and India's patterns of aid and cooperation, while appearing to be on a different basis from that of the West, in effect promotes similar dependency relationships (Naidu and Herman 2009). Both China and India, they argue, provide both monetary and non-monetary forms of development assistance that include technical assistance, debt relief, training programmes, tariff reductions and interest-free loans.

The conditionalities of Western aid apparently do not exist in these aid relationships. However, the ‘no-strings-attached’ and interest-free loans are coupled with expectations of political loyalty on key international matters, such as the One China policy, expectations to give preference to Chinese and Indian companies and workers, and agreements to purchase Chinese and Indian equipment. African governments, according to Naidu and Herman, have not sought greater participation of African governments, companies or workers in infrastructure projects. What this changing ‘aid architecture’ has done, however, is ‘to increase the leverage of African governments vis a vis their traditional donors’(Naidu and Herman 2009, 162)., In a similar vein, Carmody has argued that BRICS has opened a ‘policy space’ for African elites without challenging neo-liberal modalities of engagement, resulting in a ‘diversified dependence’ rather than structural change in African economies (Carmody 2020, 364; Taylor 2014).

Studies specifically concerned with BRICS countries’ economic activities in Mozambique have shown the same range of relationships. Considering Brazil's relationship with Mozambique, Alden, Chichava, and Alves (2017) have argued that Brazilian assistance to Mozambique is NOT free from commercial interests and is ‘always accompanied by caveats, and is not very different from that of traditional donors working within the logic of North–South cooperation and indeed reinforces unequal relationships between the two countries through an extractive model of development (Alden, Chichava, and Alves 2017).

Russia and Mozambique are long-standing, staunch allies. From the 1960s many of Mozambique’s leaders were educated in Russia, and educational aid in the form of scholarships has continued (Kachur 2020). In recent years, cooperation has focused on military affairs, with Russian interest being driven by gas and the opportunity to diversify its imports/exports and soften the impact of Western economic sanctions (Sukhankin 2019). These relationships also have political ramifications. Mozambique abstained from voting against Russia in the UN General Assembly vote in March 2022 that held Russia responsible for the war in Ukraine. Instead, Mozambique took a position similar to that of South Africa, citing the importance of negotiations between all parties (Club of Mozambique 2022). Maritime cooperation has existed for a considerable time between India and Mozambique and Mozambique is the ‘third largest recipient of concessional Lines of Credit from India’ with development cooperation being ‘high on the agenda’ (Beri 2014).

China's role has been more significant. It has been seen as a partner, not a colonizer and has generally been welcomed by Mozambicans. Its loans for infrastructure, building and improving major roads, railways, bridges, hospitals and military installations have been cheaper than World Bank loans and without heavy economic conditionalities (Robinson and Hale 2017, 41). In addition to infrastructure, China has invested in agriculture, aquaculture and forestry and has developed an interest in oil, gas and coal. Adherence to the One China policy, that Taiwan is part of China and China the sole, legitimate authority, is the quid pro quo.

A comprehensive study of Chinese aid to education in Mozambique in 2012 argued that Chinese educational aid strategies were being pursued within the framework of China aiming to stimulate its soft power in Africa (Njal 2012, 6). These are consistent with the forms of educational aid provided during the period from 1976 to 1990 by Russia, the GDR and China. Njal argues however that some of this investment is aimed at benefiting China rather than Mozambique. Thus private companies are shown ‘to play a role in providing aid in education, but not purely on humanitarian grounds, for example, Kingho [China's largest private coal mining company] is investing for its own business in Mozambique by allowing that certain number of local people be trained in areas related to its business’(Njal 2012, 20). Njal is moreover critical of the current linkage, not seeing it as cooperation, as everything is one-way: the movement of students is one-way, Mozambican universities do not host students from China, and the agreement between the four higher education students ‘envisage(s) ‘a transmission’ of the Chinese experience’ (Njal 2012, 11).

As also indicated above, South Africa's relationship with Mozambique is also important and has changed from labour extraction to foreign direct investment. As Castel-Branco put it as early as 2002: ‘South African capitalism has moved to regional investment policies and strategies that favour expansion and internationalisation of South African firms, and control over production and markets, at the same time that labour and labour relations are restructured at home’ (Castel-Branco 2002; see also 2004). In this respect, the relationship conforms to parts of the key features of sub-imperialism outlined by Valencia (Valencia 2017a, 2017b). Mozambique, as shown above, has taken a similar stance as South Africa on the Ukraine and other political issues related to the BRICS countries.

Aid is delivered in a context of what Cross has referred to as the ‘unfulfilled promise’ of Mozambican education manifested in extremely low enrolment and literacy rates as well as schooling outcomes (Cross 2011). In 2006, bilateral and multilateral donors supported 82% of the educational budget. What is the role of BRICS countries specifically in this?

Educational modalities

At the education level, BRICS countries’ influence in Mozambique is manifested in different ways at different levels of the system because of the different historical relations between Mozambique and each country in the bloc. They illustrate how ‘the global North–South polarity is being supplemented in the multi-polar setting by East-South, East–West and China–India axes that have yet, however, ‘to modify the Anglo-American domination … .’ (Marginson 2022a, 2022b, 178). In higher education, modalities of engagement include those identified by Njal in a study of Chinese educational aid to Mozambique: scholarships, professional training, agreements for cooperation between universities, the promotion of the language, and the building of infrastructure (Njal 2012). Our analysis below accordingly outlines how the modalities of scholarship programmes and student flows between individual BRICS countries and Mozambique broaden existing relationships as well as constitute key modalities through which sub-imperialist relationships can be observed.

Scholarship programmes are one of the most visible modes through which China, India, Brazil and to a lesser extent Russia make their presence felt in Mozambique. Official scholarship programmes of these countries enable many Mozambicans to study in these countries’ universities. Though most scholarship programmes are not exclusive to Mozambique but are open to all citizens from ‘developing countries’, it is worth noting that in the case of Mozambique, there are also economic interests at stake from the BRICS bloc in Mozambique. Besides scholarship programmes, China's Confucius Institute established at Eduardo Mondlane University in 2012 teaches Chinese language and culture. This initiative appears to serve Chinese interests rather than those of Mozambique. Graduates from the Institute ‘can either apply for scholarships to continue their studies in Chinese universities or find employment in Chinese enterprises or engage in Chinese-related careers’ (CI-EMU 2023).

Brazil's scholarship programmes are open to all African and Latin American countries. However, because of language barriers, most vacancies are offered to students from Portuguese-speaking countries, including Mozambique (Ress 2018). For example, in 2017, out of 47 vacancies open to African and Latin American countries, 24 were taken by Mozambican students (CAPES 2023b). Scholarships to study in India are also for developing countries. However, India's economic investments cannot be ignored as they are related to scholarships looking at scientific areas prioritised by the programmes. Data from 2022 show that there were 219 Mozambican nationals studying in India (UIS 2023).

An important and common aspect of these programmes is that they are one-way: there are no official programmes for Chinese, Indian or Brazilian citizens to study in Mozambican universities. There are recent moves for short-term internships for Brazilian quilombolas students (descendants and remnants of communities formed by fugitive slaves, the quilombos, between the sixteenth century and 1888) going to the Universidade Pedagógica in Maputo, with applications opening in January 2024, for 15 days as part of the South–South Exchange Program which aims to ‘encourage the exchange of knowledge, experiences and public policies that contribute to the fight against racism and the education of ethnic-racial relations through academic cooperation between higher education institutions’ (CAPES 2023a). The internship is only for 15 days and targets students who are descendants of black slaves. This appears to suggest that the programme is very limited in its ambitions.

Student flows are another important indicator of the influence of BRICS in Mozambican education. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS 2023) indicates that there is no data on students from BRICS countries studying in Mozambique over a period of about three years. In the other direction, there were 530 students from Mozambique in Brazil in 2021, 285 in South Africa in 2021, 219 in India in 2022 and 23 in Russia in 2019 (UIS 2023) as Table 1 shows. Though there is no information from UIS, every year the Instituto de Bolsa de Estudo (Institute for Scholarships), Mozambique's Government Scholarships Body, selects candidates for scholarships offered to Mozambican nationals by Governments around the world. Data from the IBE (2023) indicate that 13 students were selected to study in China in 2021–2022 and 6 selected for 2022–2023.

Table 1. Student flows between BRICS and Mozambique.

Country of origin	Country of destination
	Mozambique	Brazil	Russia	India	China	South Africa
Mozambique		530 (2021)	23 (2019)	219 (2022)	NA	285 (2021)
Brazil	NA		417 (2019)	13 (2022)	NA	36 (2021)
Russia	NA	21 (2021)		23 (2022)	NA	19 (2022)
India	NA	25 (2021)	12,105 (2019)		NA	390 (2021)
China	NA	242 (2021)	18,531 (2019)	46 (2022)		154 (2021)
South Africa	NA	61 (2021)	548 (2019)	121 (2022)	NA

Note: NA–Not Available.

Source: Adapted from UIS (2023).

These numbers were small compared with flows towards Western countries. Outside BRICS, other destinations in the West for students from Mozambique, include, at the top, Portugal (1545), followed by the UK (144) and the USA (133). Other Western countries, with low numbers, are France (73), Germany (66), Italy (46), Spain (39), Sweden (26), Australia (21) and Canada (18) (UIS 2023). The top destinations for Mozambican students were thus Portugal and Brazil.

If the flow of students is one-way between Mozambique and BRICS countries, the same cannot be said of flows between the BRICS countries. For example, in 2019 alone, in Russia there were 417 students from Brazil, 12,105 from India, 18,531 from China and 548 from South Africa (UIS 2023). In 2021–2022 there were 36 students from Brazil, 19 from Russia, 390 from India and 154 from China in South Africa (UIS 2023). This is indicative of a very strong two-way movement of students in the bloc, though from UIS data there is no information on BRICS students going to China. From these data, it appears that Mozambique imports education from BRICS countries in the sense that graduates from BRICS return to Mozambique with foreign qualifications which are validated by the local labour market.

At the level of schooling, somewhat different dynamics are observed. But the trend here confirms wider trends in the expansion of private schooling since 1990 (See for example Bennell 2022; Spreen and Kamat 2018). Here the role of South Africa, not as nation-state, but as an intermediary of global private education, is significant. A number of South African private school chains have expanded to Mozambique. Some schools based in Mozambique, such as the Trichardt School for Christian Education (TSCE), use the South African curriculum. It has operated since 1993 under the umbrella of the Reformed Church of Mozambique founded by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. The South African Independent Examinations Board is the examining body (TSCE 2023). The school is located in Maputo and offers Christian values-based education for K-12 with tuition fees ranging from 155,410.00 Mozambican meticals (MZN) in pre-school per year to 252,370,00 MZN in grade 12 per year as of 2020 academic year (TSCE 2023). Grade 12 fees are equivalent to 3.949,7 USD as of 2023 December exchange rate. These fees are higher than fees for undergraduate students at private universities and fees charged for doctoral programmes at public and private universities – these charge around 240,000. MZN per year, equivalent to approximately 3,759,09 USD.

South African schools are also operating in Mozambique as branches of global private education chains. Using online and in-person interviews conducted on 12, 18, 19 and 22 August 2022 with key informants, supplemented by online research, we investigated two instances – accelerated Education (Christian) Enterprises, and Cambrilearn. AAE/ACE has been in Mozambique since 2002 and has expanded beyond Maputo to other provinces. Cambrilearn established a foothold in 2022. Both promote private education but differ in that AEE is faith-based and US-linked, whereas Cambrilearn is for-profit and UK-linked. Both demonstrate the interpenetration of global and local South African capital, with South Africa providing the base and headquarters for American and British educational business ventures for further African expansion. Our research has shown that the schooling provided by both is urban-based, charges fees, employs expatriate and local teachers, is conducted mainly in English, has small classes, operates with learner-centred, inquiry-based educational approaches, uses curriculum ‘products’ developed elsewhere that are aligned to differing degrees with the South African and Mozambican curricula, and aims at a paying, middle-class clientele in different parts of Maputo and other urban centres.

New educational initiatives both in schooling and higher education have followed the market orientation of the relationship between South Africa and Mozambique and the insertion of both into a globalised neo-liberal political economy. The private end of the schooling market in education in Mozambique has been deepened by educational initiatives whose managers are South African, but which are deeply globalised. These initiatives have generally served the middle class who are able to use this education to enhance their possibilities for higher education in South Africa and elsewhere. In higher education, the introduction of tuition fees for evening classes has turned public universities into ‘privates’ competing with de jure private universities because students have to pay for these classes unlike day classes which are funded by the Government.

Conclusion

In this article, we have sought a more analytical understanding of BRICS in education than those studies conducted within and for the BRICS bloc (see, for example, Khomyakov 2018; Khomyakov, Dwyer, and Weller 2020). We set out by examining the applicability of the concept of sub-imperialism to educational relationships established by BRICS countries with Mozambique. Following Martin (2019), we hold that old analogies with nineteenth-century colonialism and imperialism no longer work in a context where there are major geo-political economic and political shifts. South Africa, for example, is no longer an unequivocal agent for Western interests. The pivot to the East is not mutually exclusive of seeing South Africa as sharing one of the features of sub-imperialism identified by Valencia, drawing on the work of Marini, namely that a sub-imperial power is one that, in the first instance, is ‘a dependent country becoming a ‘regional sub-centre’ whose influence is felt in the countries and systems around it’ (Valencia 2017a, 2017b, 67). Within the bloc, however, South Africa qualifies as a ‘dependent country’ whose relationship with Western imperial powers is balanced by a growing dependence on China, the dominant party in BRICS and the New (BRICS) Development Bank. We showed that South Africa is a regional sub-centre in relation to Mozambique economically. While the other countries in the bloc do not neighbour Mozambique, they have historical and increasing economic and aid relationships that share important features of the ‘aid colonialism’ identified in relationships with the West. And while the conditionalities of aid do not always ‘look like’ those of the West, there are unspoken political conditionalities, manifested for example in UN votes on Ukraine and adherence to the One China policy. They do represent a major geo-political realignment, however.

We have shown that common modalities of involvement, even of South Africa, are fairly limited and do not yet appear to extend to policy, although we suggest that policy accommodation is a key dimension of these relationships. Most significantly, both as a bloc and for individual countries, relationships are one-way, and not two-way, as between equals. On the key question of whether relationships have extended neo-liberal political economy deeper into their regional hinterlands, the answer in the case of Mozambique would be in the affirmative. Both South Africa and Mozambique have played a role in ‘accommodating’ and ‘re-legitimating globalised neo-liberalism’, not in question in BRICS, in providing the framework for interactions that promote deepening inequalities through education; however, the initiatives have also had contradictory impacts insofar as they have been limited by a variety of factors. These initiatives and policy accommodations appear to have played a significant role in reconfiguring education systems, particularly in Mozambique, strengthening discourses on and practices of marketisation of education and pushing education away from what it is supposed to be: a public good. BRICS has not to date provided a counter-balance. It would be important, going forward, to keep track of whether and how changing economic and geo-political relationships might continue to alter the educational landscape and how BRICS networks in higher education specifically might be contributing to the geo-political positioning of the bloc at the global scale.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the readers and editors for extremely helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linda Chisholm

Linda Chisholm is a Professor in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She publishes on the historical, contemporary and comparative aspects of education policy and curriculum in South Africa and the region. Her most recent books include Teacher Preparation in South Africa: History, Policy and Future Perspectives (Emerald Press, 2019) and Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education (Wits Press, 2017).

Adelino Chissale

Adelino Chissale holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Johannesburg. Since 2016 he has taught Sociology of Education in the MEd programme in the Postgraduate School at the University of Saint Thomas of Mozambique. His research interests include education subjectivities, education policy and neoliberalism, and decolonization of higher education. Since 2018 he has been the Academic Director of the University of Saint Thomas of Mozambique.