These data are collected from studies looking at Chinese training courses for African officials, Chinese trade in agricultural commodities with Africa, and registered Chinese investments in Africa. These formed an important contextualisation of our research in the four case study countries which we then built upon in our fieldwork. Those final analyses and interpretations of the data are also included as data here in the form of working papers. Based on qualitative research methods, they present the reality on the ground which can often be quite different to the image presented by the raw figures, often published by government departments.The “China and Brazil in African Agriculture” (CBAA) project will explore the new development cooperation engagements in agriculture across four African countries. The project will examine the politics of aid and investment policy in China and Brazil, exploring how understandings of agricultural development are translated in aid and investment projects. The project will be carried out through an innovative international partnership connecting researchers from institutions in the UK and Africa, already linked through the IDS-led Future Agricultures Consortium, with colleagues from China and Brazil. The research will begin with a mapping phase that will generate a geo-referenced database of Chinese and Brazilian agricultural development cooperation projects in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. This will be followed by in-depth case studies of a sample of these projects, examining the ways in which experience and expertise from China and Brazil engage with the realities of African agriculture and the perspectives of African scientists and farmers. Comparative analysis across projects, countries and types of intervention will address the question of whether a new paradigm of development cooperation is emerging, and assess the implications for the future of aid and investment policy.

Topics: