South-South/Triangular Cooperation and

In recent years, the ProSAVANA Project being carried out by Japan, Brazil and Mozambique has become a focus of wide attention. The project aims to develop agriculture in Mozambique’s tropical savannah, drawing on Brazil’s “Cerrado ” development as a reference. The “Cerrado ” tropical savannah in Brazil, once regarded as a barren plateau, has been transformed into one of the world’s largest and most productive crop-agricultural regions. Brazil-Japan cooperation stretching back almost three decades to the mid-1970s was one of the factors which contributed to the process. The ProSAVANA Project is an agricultural development assistance program targeting synergistic effects from both promoting agricultural investment by the private sector and raising the incomes of the small-scale farmers. The program also aims to generate synergies from the development of agriculture and investment in infrastructure, keeping in mind a concrete proposal at the national level of the principles of “responsible agricultural investment” led by Japan.1 The idea behind the ProSAVANA project dates back to 2009. At a top-level meeting between Brazil and Japan at the L’Aquila Summit in July of that year, an agreement was reached to “develop agriculture in African tropical savannahs through Japanese-Brazilian cooperation by building on the achievements of the Cerrado agricultural development 1 “Responsible agricultural investment (RAI) ” was proposed by Japan on the occasion of L’Aquila Summit in Jul