South South Capacity Building in Agricultural Extension. A Comparative Analysis of Brazilian, Indian and Chinese Experiences in Malawi

Prezi presentationIn the last decade the so-called ‘rising powers’ have received increased attention from policy makers, academicians and practitioners for their assistance in agriculture and food security with African countries . Agricultural extension has been identified as one of the main domains in which countries such as Brazil, India and China are providing capacity building. Some authors and policy makers claim that the rising powers’ cooperation models are markedly different from the approaches of ‘traditional donors’ (e.g. OECD-DAC members) and would or could be more effective in addressing the food insecurity and other agricultural challenges of African countries. The rising powers frame their assistance in a ‘South South Cooperation discourse, i.e. (1) a rejection of hierarchical (or donor-recipient) relations between partner countries without conditions and interference; and (2) a capacity building methodology which emphasizes the sharing of experiences, which are based on the rising powers’ own methods to address their own development challenges . However there is little tangible and evidenced based material to confirm or refute these claims. This article addresses this issue by analysing the governmental agricultural assistance of Brazil, India and China with Malawi – a country which attracted relatively recently the attention of the three countries in question. In particular, the paper offers a comparative analysis of a number of selected capacity building initiatives of Brazil, India and China in agricultural extension in Malawi. The objective is to identify the capacity building approach of the these three countries and to assess whether and how the supposed claim regarding the use of expertise based on addressing own development challenges is implemented. The selected initiatives are representative of the three countries’ general agricultural assistance approaches and include bilateral as well as trilateral cooperation initiatives (i.e. cooperation between Malawi, rising power and ‘traditional donor’). As an analytical framework the paper uses the methodology developed by Huyse et al. who build further and combining main existing views on capacity development evaluation methods. It draws on information collected during field work in Malawi in 2013 and China and Brazil in 2014 (policy documents and interviews with more than 80 representatives of OECD-DAC donors, rising powers, the Malawian government and other development actors). The study features in a four year research (2012-2015) entitled ‘Challenging the Status-Quo. The impact of the emerging economies on the global governance of development cooperation’ commissioned by the Flemish Policy Research Centre for Foreign Affairs, Entrepreneurship and Development Cooperation . The paper concludes (1) that the three countries apply a range of different capacity building approaches, including a particular mix of ‘hands-on’, peer-to-peer and human resource and institutional capacity building strategies; (2) the decision making power of the Malawian counterparts varies greatly between the different approaches and affects the potential effectivity and relevance of the approach; (3) especially trilateral initiatives dedicate attention to monitoring and evaluation; (4) institutional fragmentation of the rising powers’ assistance, and other contextual (esp. political) factors within the partner countries are important issues that might harm the effectiveness of the extension approaches. These conclusions imply a greater coordination between different development partners (i.e. traditional donors and rising powers), better and more monitoring an evaluation of extension initiatives and an increased focus on institutional capacity building by and within the Malawian government.status: publishe