President Lula has emphasised his commitment to making the fight against hunger a central focus for Brazil’s international policy engagements during his third term of office, which began in January. Food and Nutrition Security also ranked high among the sectoral priorities for Brazilian South-South Cooperation (SSC) during the previous period in government of Lula’s Workers’ Party (2003-2016) and remained an important component of Brazil’s portfolio even under the Bolsonaro government (2018-2022).
Moreover, SSC in food and nutritional security has increasingly shifted its emphasis towards concerted efforts (at international as well as domestic levels) to deliver one of the pillars of the renowned Brazilian Zero Hunger strategy: linking food supply and demand to create a virtuous cycle to fight hunger and poverty.
In this second part of our two-part review of the outlook for Brazil-Africa cooperation in food and climate justice we discuss some of the obstacles that a renewed Brazilian commitment to SSC in this field will need to overcome if it is to meet the expectations raised by Lula’s declarations.
Reinvigorated Brazilian engagement in regional and global political blocs has been one of the most visible aspects of Brazilian diplomacy in the first few months of Lula’s third government, following his return to the presidency in October 2022.
Africa holds an important position in Brazil’s new foreign policy, highlighted by Lula’s recent visits to Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe after the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. In terms of domestic politics, strengthening Brazil-Africa relations is seen as a way of dealing with Brazil’s own identity and social issues and of preserving the memory of its cultural and historical origins. As Lula himself put it during a seminar on revitalising Brazil-Africa partnerships, “relaunching relations with Africa means Brazil reencountering itself”.
At the same time, Brazilian foreign policy towards Africa has also been traditionally formulated as a pragmatic means of diversifying partnerships to overcome structural economic dependencies, support national development and secure an autonomous position in the international system.
Under Lula, this has included an emphasis on securing food justice at the international level, with a focus on support for African countries’ efforts to achieve food and nutrition security. This emphasis on tackling hunger was evident in the fact that Lula’s participation in the summit of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Nations (CPLP) in São Tomé and Príncipe on August 27 was preceded by Brazilian official support for CPLP’s Food and Nutrition Security Council meeting. Lula has also stated his intention to use the Brazilian presidency of the G20 (which begins in December 2023) to push for a Global Alliance against Hunger and Food and Nutritional Insecurity.
Brazilian SSC for food justice: challenges on the road from rhetoric to reality?
Although there are many factors favouring a revamped Brazilian engagement with championing SSC in the field of food and nutrition security, there are several bottlenecks that will be faced by efforts to meet the expectations raised by presidential ambitions.
Many of the challenges faced by Brazil’s SSC today did not apply during its ‘golden age’ a decade or more ago. In particular, the country’s domestic context is much less favourable, marked as it is by budgetary constraints and major social and economic challenges, compounded by strong opposition in the National Congress.
However, other challenges are not new. One key longstanding issue is the absence of a specific legal framework for international development cooperation, the lack of which hinders the ability of Brazilian SSC to gain coherence, scale and sustainability. A Bill to regulate the various modalities of Brazilian international cooperation across has been on hold pending allocation of legislative time since before Bolsonaro was elected.
Another longstanding challenge is the ‘isolationist’ tendency of Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, known as ‘Itamaraty’, named after the moated palace in which it is based in Brasília. Itamaraty has long sought to follow its own path and has resisted efforts to democratise decision-making on foreign policy issues, including SSC initiatives. There are promising signs that Lula’s new government intends to reinvigorate the Brazilian tradition of civil society participation in policymaking, including the establishment of an Interministerial Social Participation System and the revival of various key participatory mechanisms and spaces.
However, although Itamaraty has appointed its own Social Participation Advisor, there are few concrete indications that the ministry as a whole is interested in moving in this direction and leaving behind its insulated tradition, within which civil society participation has historically been characterised by its low degree of formalisation and institutionalisation, and its discretionary nature.
In addition to tackling the domestic challenges outlined above, Brazilian policymakers will need to show that they understand that both the African continent and the international development cooperation landscape that have changed massively since Lula last bestrode the world stage.
As the BRICS summit illustrated, the contemporary international development landscape is much more fractured by geopolitics than it was during Lula’s first period in government. While that period was marked by increasing interest from OECD countries in allying North-South and South Cooperation, this has now been overshadowed by the polarisation and mutual suspicion between China, Brazil’s fellow BRICS member and most important trading partner, and the US and EU. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, another BRICS country, has intensified North-South and East-West cleavages, and mediation attempts by Brazil and the African Union alike have gained little traction.
Meanwhile, Africa itself has changed a great deal since Brazil was last visible as a significant player on the continent. As Stephen Devereux highlighted in his contribution to the workshop organised by IDS, Articulação Sul and the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília, Africa has demonstrated significant capacity to innovate in some key fields where Brazil lost its policy dynamism over the last decade, including social protection.
This means that Brazilian SSC will have to demonstrate that its commitment to the principle of mutual learning is more than lip service, and that the country is genuinely interested in learning from innovations in African partner countries even in areas where it has traditionally seen itself as a policy exporter. At the same time, the institutional architecture of Brazilian SSC, and in particular its coordinating body, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), will need to develop rapidly if it is to rise to the challenge of meeting the high expectations that have been raised by Lula’s energetic return to the world stage.
