Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa: More Food International and the Disputed Meanings of “Family Farming”

Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, examines the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas that emerge in particular settings, such as family farming in Brazil, do not travel easily across space and socio-political realities. Taking a discourse-analytical perspective, we consider actors’ narratives of family farming and the MFI program, and how these narratives navigate between Brazil and three African countries – Ghana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe