Organisation and Politics in South-South Cooperation: Brazil's Technical Cooperation in Africa

How is Brazilian South-South technical cooperation organised, and how does this structure relate to the politics of cooperation? Focusing on the recent surge in Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa, I argue that the organisational structures involved in Brazilian technical cooperation are tightly intertwined with the political motivations behind the provision of such cooperation. Although individual ministries and other government divisions have provided technical cooperation since the 1960s, in the past decade the federal government has worked to harness this dispersed cooperation so as to advance broader foreign policy goals. In addition to helping legitimise the social policies implemented domestically by specific ministries, technical cooperation is increasingly used to bolster the government's global power aspirations and to resist Northern-led efforts to set international development norms. However, this harnessing effort has run into internal and external constraints that cast doubt on the Brazilian government's ability to instrumentalise cooperation as a foreign policy tool.