BRAZIL: Aid from Below
Abstract
“…o Brasil vem desenvolvendo uma maneira bastante própria de cooperar com os países em desenvolvimento … Trata-se de um modelo ainda em construção, que, a pesar de já revelar algumas de suas características, ainda carece de maior sistematização e debate.”1
These words written by President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva open the preface to the Brazilian government’s first official report on its foreign aid program, published in 2010. In English, this declaration reads, “Brazil has developed its own method to cooperate with developing countries […] It is a model still under construction, that, despite having already revealed some of its characteristics, still needs major systematization and debate.”2 Brazil genuinely believes in its own system for foreign aid, which brings the public, academic, and civil sectors of society together to offer aid without conditionalities to countries whose difficulties mirror those of Brazil’s past and present. The report also emphasizes the failures of previous aid paradigms in adequately addressing poverty, asserting developing countries’ importance in reassessing aid practices.3 Nonetheless, even as he remains convinced that the Brazilian method of foreign aid is sound and successful in many ways, the former president is willing to concede that the Brazilian method requires more study and development to become truly successful and effective. This article will take a brief look at Brazilian aid practices to document the strengths of both South-South cooperation and trilateral cooperation as well as opportunities to improve these aid approaches, and conclude with recommendations for the wider aid community.
Brazilian Aid Processes
Brazil’s foreign aid program, headed by the Agência Brasileira de Cooperação (ABC), focuses on helping countries that have had a development experience similar to its own. This similarity of experience provides a basis for Brazil to encourage the use of programs and policies developed through Brazil’s experience and internal discussion, with the assumption that similarities ensure programs that were successful in Brazil would also be successful in the partner country.4 As a result, Brazil’s aid agency works most often with other Latin American countries and Portuguese-speaking countries, although aid is given to a number of countries that do not fall into either category. Brazilian programs also focus on areas where they have expertise, such as agricultural training and infrastructure or conditional cash transfer programs following the successful Bolsa Familia model.5
Brazil contributes 76 percent of its total assistance to multilateral institutions, whether they are international organizations or regional development banks. The remaining 24 percent is disbursed through bilateral partnerships, called South-South cooperation (SSC), or with a traditional donor partner, known as trilateral cooperation.6 These bilateral partnerships are roughly equivalent to traditional donors’ bilateral aid in that ABC is working directly with a country’s government. ABC prefers to use the word “cooperation,” rather than bilateral aid, to signal that the process is a two-way knowledge exchange and participatory experience rather than a one-sided gift or loan.7 Trilateral cooperation is defined by the OECD-DAC’s Task Team on South-South Cooperation as “the collaboration between a Southern, sometimes called pivotal, provider and a Northern donor in benefit of a third recipient country.”8 This method is meant to take advantage of the experience and funding of a traditional donor as well as the trust fostered by shared experience between the emerging donor and the recipient country. Approximately one fifth of Brazil’s current projects, or 88 total projects, are trilateral cooperation.9
Brazilian Aid Principles
In the preface to Brazil’s report on foreign aid, former President Lula da Silva highlights several key features of Brazilian aid along with differences between Brazilian and traditional donor programs, on which Brazil prides itself. Above all, Brazilian aid focuses on partner countries and their needs. Since Brazil emphasizes respect for national sovereignty, the Brazilian aid program does not include conditionalities. Additionally, Brazil's aid approach incorporates partner countries into the project process from the negotiation phase through the end of the project. Partner countries are also expected to enter into an exchange of benefits and responsibilities rather than simply functioning as recipients of aid. The final product of this two-way partnership is, ideally, projects supported by Brazilian funding that can have an impact on the specific needs of a country and be a part of the partner government’s long-term plan.10
These features can be found in other emerging donor programs that focus on the principles of horizontality, consensus, and equity. As Brazil's approach suggests, emerging donors use comparative advantages and shared experiences or regional ties to create effective and embedded aid programs. The OECD-DAC’s Task Team asserts that these principles support the aid effectiveness agenda agreed upon by traditional donors in the 2005 Paris Declaration and the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action. Brazil, however, along with other emerging donors, displays a reluctance to support principles that are at the core of traditional donor assistance, making donors wary of the emerging actors’ increasing activity. For instance, although emerging donor programs, like Brazil's, support OECD aid effectiveness, the organization notes Brazil joins many Southern aid providers, including Cuba and Nigeria, in non-ratification of the Paris Declaration, and a preference to emphasize principles such as respecting the sovereignty of recipient partners.11 Brazil itself indicated its unwillingness to ratify OECD principles of aid effectiveness in the preface to its report.12
There are other practices that compound traditional donors’ caution. In 2006, former OECD-DAC Chair Richard Manning published a memo on the risks of the “wider range of financing options” that the entrance of emerging donors creates for low-income countries seeking aid. In his view, emerging donors could potentially inhibit the DAC’s pursuit of aid effectiveness principles.13 Through this perspective, emerging donors are not necessarily committed to traditional aid principles, a thought that disturbs traditional donors in their pursuit of good aid practices. Manning also expresses worry that a lack of conditionalities, as well as the absence of rigorous benchmarks agreed upon by DAC donors, may result in countries receiving aid without making substantial improvements in governance or without being able to repay. He suggests that the lack of conditionalities could result in minimal progress on governance and re emergence of debt duties for low-income countries.14
Emerging donors are lagging behind in data collection and project supervision, two things that are key to the Paris Declaration. Managing for results and accountability are difficult to improve without statistics and in-country donor presence.15 In Brazil’s case, the 2010 report – the result of a series of surveys – was the first attempt to gather statistics on aid disbursements. While this qualitative methodology of collecting data on Brazil’s program is something that ABC believes could be useful for other emerging donors, ABC also states that the method was not reliable enough to analyze projects prior to 2005. Furthermore, ABC claims that Brazil’s reporting technique requires refinement, and that the agency lacked sufficient resources to pursue further data collection for the report.16
Assessing the success of South-South cooperation and trilateral partnerships is necessary before considering whether traditional donors should increase their cooperation with emerging donors and if they should encourage or facilitate more SSC work among developing nations. Without addressing the risks earlier discussed, increasing SSC and trilateral work could create future problems for the world. There are challenges, however, in measuring the success of the Brazilian case is difficult because of differences in key definitions and a lack of documentation and statistics.
Differences in Key Definitions
Brazil’s report on foreign cooperation divides Brazil's aid activities into five categories: humanitarian assistance; scholarships for foreigners to study in Brazil; technical, scientific, and technological cooperation; contributions to international organizations and regional banks; and peace operations.17 These broad categories present somewhat of an issue for assessing Brazil’s aid contributions for a variety of reasons-most stemming from Brazil’s emphasis on their foreign work as cooperation rather than development assistance.
Foremost, OECD-DAC countries do not generally consider scholarships for foreigners to be characterized as foreign aid. Brazil, however, lists this as “one of the most traditional methods of cooperation.”18 These scholarships provide funding for foreigners from a select list of countries to study in Brazil, especially for those interested in science and technology. Ministries associated with Brazilian aid appear to view these scholarships as a method of investing in a country’s capacity by creating more educated leaders. This type of spending accounts for 10 percent of Brazil’s total foreign cooperation.19 Disagreement on whether this constitutes foreign assistance would result in a substantially different portrait of aid, both in quantity and in Brazilian actors involved.
According to ABC-submitted documents, technical assistance constitutes a great amount of Brazil’s humanitarian aid. While Brazil states that humanitarian aid accounted for 25.5 percent of foreign assistance in 2009, documentation from ABC only reveals one project that was coded as anything related to humanitarian assistance according to OECD sector codes.20 21
This lone project is coded as disaster prevention and preparedness, and involves training sessions in Colombia on forest fire management.22
The report on foreign assistance does specify that humanitarian assistance is largely given through ministries related to food, health, shipping, and human rights. In that regard, it may be a logical assumption that ABC documents do not reflect humanitarian spending because the agency is not charged with managing this type of cooperation. However, the countries singled out as major recipients of humanitarian assistance do appear frequently in ABC’s project listings, and many project descriptions discuss technical assistance for capacity building following a crisis. These projects were all coded to other OECD sector codes, such as agriculture, health, or education.23 This indicates that Brazil’s definition of humanitarian assistance differs from the OECD’s enough to create a substantial disparity in reporting.
Lack of Documentation and Statistics
The failure to collect and publish data is something that comes up frequently when studying Brazilian aid. It is difficult to find information, even with looking for a very specific project, given the multiplicity of Brazilian agencies and ministries working in foreign cooperation. Trilateral partners make it equally difficult to find documentation of the partnership and its results. In general, the lack of information makes it difficult to determine whether SSC and trilateral cooperation are successful and more efficient than traditional aid giving, and in and of itself indicates the need to improve processes and methods for results-tracking and transparency before encouraging the increase of SSC and trilateral cooperation.
Project specifics, planned or executed, are difficult to come by. ABC’s own report on foreign aid gives information on commitment totals and destination countries, but does not talk about specific projects and cannot provide information on what the projects have accomplished, and the agency's website provides little more in terms of data and project information. ABC took steps to improve information availability, through collaboration with AidData – a transparency initiative – to publish statistics on the commitment and disbursement of aid for all available documents using ABC project documents.24 Since ABC is only one of the donating partners within the Brazilian government, this documentation does not reflect the whole of Brazil’s foreign cooperation. Documentation on projects under other line ministries is not easily available via ministry websites, and is rarely mentioned in great specifics. Gathering a portfolio of Brazil’s projects and their details is nearly impossible, with even the number of projects unknown. For instance, starting in 2002, Germany and Brazil worked together to establish and improve national AIDS programmes in Paraguay, Colombia, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, through Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Brazil's Ministry of Health.25 There is a limited amount of detail on the project via either the websites for Germany's aid agencies or those of Brazil's Ministry of Health and ABC, which mentions Germany as a general partner for development. While a webpage for Subregional South-South Cooperation for German and Brazilian cooperation on HIV and AIDS in Latin America exists, it only gives some details about the partnership, while not even listing the eleven countries now involved in the partnership.26ABC’s project listing provided through AidData shows HIV/AIDS related projects for El Salvador, but the project data does not make clear whether or not this project even falls under triangular aid with Germany or is part of Brazil’s bilateral SSC.
Trilateral partners also offer very little information about projects. ABC lists Japan, United States, and Germany as their principal partners for trilateral cooperation, and all three of these countries’ agencies shed little light on the inner workings of Brazilian projects and their results.27 The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) discusses its work with Brazil but does not include documents, statistics, or particulars via heir agency website or in documents.28
Germany’s website for its trilateral work with Brazil has not been launched, but appears to be in planning.29 Searching the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) website uncovers a news release on a memorandum of understanding establishing trilateral cooperation in 2009, but little other details.30
Without project documents or full statistics on giving, it is difficult to assess whether Brazilian foreign cooperation has been successful – or even what it has been doing at all. Numbers on commitment are available from ABC, but no information on disbursement or project results can be found, and no other ministries publish information on amount of money spent on international cooperation. The full picture of cooperation across all Brazilian ministries is only available from the Brazilian report on 2005 to 2009, which stated itself that the methodology used to procure those numbers may be unreliable due to its qualitative nature.31 It is interesting that even traditional trilateral partners with more experience in managing for development results have not produced metrics or published documents allowing for a closer look at projects carried out with Brazil. This seems to indicate that the partnerships may not be producing positive or progressive changes for Brazil’s reporting method and capacity based on traditional donor experience.
Recommendations
The issues discussed above are more than problems with information – they represent the divide between Brazilian aid and traditional aid. Differing definitions of humanitarian aid and the inclusion of scholarships for foreigners indicates that Brazil sees the needs of developing countries differently. Capacity building, for ABC, is something that can be done on an individual basis by giving foreign citizens the opportunity to study in Brazilian higher education institutions. Humanitarian aid addresses long-term concerns with structure and capacity rather than immediate needs of food, shelter, or other concerns.
The lacking availability of statistics and documentation, even in instances where Brazil is partnered with a traditional donor committed to results-based management and information transparency, may indicate many things. Brazil may not be in a position to fund monitoring and evaluation properly; the wide range of Brazilian ministries involved in giving may have very different ideas of what project documents can or cannot be published, resulting in the failure to publish anything; or Brazil may be reluctant to follow the example of traditional donors in publishing project documents and details, just as the agencies and ministries are reluctant to follow the Paris Declaration and OECD definition of development assistance as noted in the national report. Further information, however, must be available before any concrete observations can be made.
Despite Brazil’s reluctance to buy into traditional donors’ belief in transparency and its connection to aid effectiveness, it still benefits from increasing capacity for monitoring and evaluation to produce public statistical reports on success. Without developing better results tracking, Brazil cannot evaluate where it has the biggest impact and where its particular policy strengths are best used. Without quantitative measures of success and strength, Brazil also cannot make a case for trilateral partnerships with traditional donors who may be more reluctant to work with emerging donors. For Brazil to be able to develop sound monitoring and evaluation, as well as work towards information availability, traditional donors must lend a hand. Traditional donors should continue to forge partnerships with ABC, through which they can share expertise and funding to bolster ABC’s capacity for measuring results and publishing assessments. Furthermore, Brazil would benefit if foreign cooperation could be consolidated into ABC. This would entail all foreign funding running through ABC, while having associated ministries work through ABC to lend expertise. The Brazilian government would then have a better idea of how much was being spent and on what, dodging future problems of redundancy and proliferation within their own aid program. Traditional donors can encourage this consolidation by working directly with ABC in all trilateral partnerships.
Brazilian foreign cooperation offers many exciting prospects in the relationships it can draw upon within Latin America, among Portuguese-speaking countries, and even in the greater community of developing nations. However, Brazil’s lack of information and definitional disconnect is a weakness that holds the country back from understanding its own strengths in aid giving and keeps traditional donors from realizing where they can benefit from a trilateral partnership with Brazil. Future research should draw upon documents and information as it becomes available to understand where Brazilian aid performs well.
ENDNOTES
1 Macedo Cintra, Marcos Antonio, ed. Cooperação Brasileira para o Desenvolvimento Internacional: 2005- 2009. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, Agência Brasileira de Cooperação, Brasilia: 2010. 78 pp. 7.
2 Author’s own translation.
3 Ibid, 7-8.
4 Macedo Cintra 2010, 7.
5 Bolsa Família is Brazil’s social welfare program, which absorbed older welfare policies and programs and unites government ministries across multiple sectors in one program to combat both the causes of poverty as well as its results. The conditional cash transfer program within Bolsa Família is the most important and well-known part of the program. Eligible families receive cash in return for fulfilling conditions, such as school attendance for young children, immunizations for babies, and clinic visits for pregnant mothers.
6 Macedo Cintra 2010, 19.
7 Ibid, 17.
8 The Task Team on South-South Cooperation. Boosting South-South Cooperation in the Context of Aid Effectiveness: Telling the Story of Partners Involved in more than 110 Cases of South-South and Triangular Cooperation. OECD: 12 March 2010. 26.
9 Overseas Development Institute. “Brazil: an emerging aid player.” Briefing Paper 64. October 2010. 3.
10 Macedo Cintra 2010, 7.
11 Task Team 2010, 14-25.
12 Ibid, 14-25.
13 Manning, Richard. “Will ‘Emerging Donors’ Change the Face of International Cooperation?” OECD/DAC: 2006. <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/38/36417541.pdf>. 1, 7-8.
14 Ibid, 10.
15 Ibid, 19-21.
16 Macedo Cintra 2010, 13-14.
17 Ibid, Sumário (Table of contents).
18 Ibid, 26.
19 Ibid, 26-32.
20 Ibid, 22; AidData. “PLAID 1.9.1 Codebook and User’s Guide.” February 2010. <http://s3.amazonaws.com/plaid19/PLAID191_codebook_23Feb2010.pdf>. Accessed 30 June 2011. 75.
21 This statement is based on all instances where Brazil is a donor of development assistance according to AidData. AidData's coverage of Brazil's aid activities span from 2005 until 2009. More information on Brazil's aid giving activities can be found on <www.aiddata.org>.
22 “Exchange of Knowledge and Experience about Forest Fire Management.” AidData project information. Brazil to Colombia. <http://www.aiddata.org/project/show/3001904>. Accessed 25 June 2011.
23 This statement is also based on all instances where Brazil is a donor of development assistance according to AidData.
24 AidData 2010.
25 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. “Subregional South-South Cooperation HIV/AIDS.” <http://www.gtz.de/en/weltweit/lateinamerika-karibik/18818.htm>.Accessed 22 June 2011. 26 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. “Subregional South-South Cooperation HIV/AIDS.” <http://www.gtz.de/en/weltweit/lateinamerika-karibik/18818.htm>.Accessed 22 June 2011. 27 Macedo Cintra 2010, 34.
28 Japan International Cooperation Agency - Brazil. <http://www.jica.go.jp/brazil/english/index.html>. Accessed 30 June 2011.
29 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit. “Programmes and projects in Brazil.” < http://www.gtz.de/en/weltweit/lateinamerika-karibik/30080.htm>. Accessed 22 June 2011.
30 United States Agency for International Development - Brazil. <http://brazil.usaid.gov/en/node/1>. Accessed 30 June 2011.
31 Macedo Cintra 2010, 13-14.