For decades, Mozambique was a showcase of a beneficial Western aid recipient on the African continent. However, following a national debt crisis and the global financial crisis in 2008, the country...Show moreFor decades, Mozambique was a showcase of a beneficial Western aid recipient on the African continent. However, following a national debt crisis and the global financial crisis in 2008, the country started looking eastwards, increasingly seeking and accepting investment and aid from China. Mozambique witnessed increasing engagement from China, especially in the exploitation of raw materials and infrastructure development. In academic literature and public discourse, the South-South cooperation between the two developing countries is often portrayed as benefitting only China, ascribing the Mozambican state a merely passive and receiving role. This thesis scrutinizes this assumption and explores the different ways in which the Mozambican government asserts its agency vis-à-vis China, specifically in the mining sector. Indeed, the analysis shows that, despite structural constraints, the government does exercise agency on various levels.Show less
In light of Africa’s gradual integration into the global market economy, the continent has increasingly attracted international investments from the emerging economies, in particular Brazil and...Show moreIn light of Africa’s gradual integration into the global market economy, the continent has increasingly attracted international investments from the emerging economies, in particular Brazil and China, since the early 2000s. Since Africa has a rich historical past related to colonialism, exploitation of and subordination to the global North, these developments question the potential of these new, dominant players in Africa to break with this vicious cycle of dependency on dominant economies. As Latin America’s strongest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), Brazil’s growing cooperation with the African continent is therefore raising the question of the country’s economic and political intentions behind its South-South Cooperation (SSC) projects. Formerly regarded as a promoter of cooperation between Southern countries by the African community, Brazil’s shift in foreign policy towards economic pragmatism is now viewed as a double-edged sword. While extensive academic research has focused on China’s role in accessing these new markets, less work has looked at Brazil’s underlying intentions behind its SSC projects. In fact, Brazil’s leading agricultural SSC project in Mozambique, the ProSAVANA project, has sparked a public and academic debate about the implications of Brazil’s cooperation for its Southern partners. The hypothesis of this thesis therefore argues that since president Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva’s rise to power in 2003, Brazil uses SSC as a tool to strengthen its economic and political influence on Sub-Saharan Africa and to diversify its economy, while subordinating the local markets to Brazil’s economic activities, hence reproducing the dependency theory. In order to confirm this hypothesis, the following research question will be central to the discussion of this thesis: How does Brazil’s agricultural South-South Cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the ProSAVANA project in Mozambique, reproduce the dependency theory?Show less
The thesis aims to illustrate how Food Aid, Free Trade Agreements, and Agricultural Dumping are closely related. By drawing the relation between these three seemingly separate issues, a divergent...Show moreThe thesis aims to illustrate how Food Aid, Free Trade Agreements, and Agricultural Dumping are closely related. By drawing the relation between these three seemingly separate issues, a divergent perspective upon the global trading system is exposed. The thesis reaches its outcome by using both macro and micro analyses. Where macro analyses allows the debate to have a more theoretical nature, the micro analyses of the case study on Agricultural Dumping in Mozambique shows a more practical side of the debate. By the use of these two analytical tools, the thesis illustrates how Agricultural Dumping is a negative effect of Food Aid, enabled through Free Trade Agreements. As open market policies and low domestic protection are part of these agreements, local agricultural markets in sub- Saharan Africa become unable to compete with subsidised imported agricultural goods. Hence, the three issues all contribute to an unequal market system that, in certain situations, provides advantages for the donor country and leaves the receiving country at a disadvantage.Show less
