(In)segurança alimentar: o papel da cooperação Sul-Sul entre Brasil e Moçambique para o combate à fome (2007-2022)

Abstract

Discussions regarding the promotion of food security gained greater international relevance after the inclusion of this concept in security debates starting in the early 1990s. With the end of the bipolar tension in the scope of the Cold War, food security began to be one of the main objectives pursued by States in the face of a constant imminence of food shortages on a global scale. Since then, food insecurity has become a widespread concern in which international cooperation has been invoked as the main instrument for dissolving this malady. International cooperation, when it encompasses the precepts of reciprocity and mutual gains, becomes a positive instrument to be used in the fight against obstacles that stifle human progress and development, in this case, hunger. In this sense, based on the cooperation between Brazil and Mozambique to combat hunger and taking into account the Brazilian success in combating this disease at the national level in the first decade of the 2000s, the present work aims to analyze the bilateral cooperation between the two countries to understand why the partnership did not result in similar results in the African country. The research has a qualitative character in which documental and bibliographical analysis is used as research instruments. The study was guided by the hypothetical-deductive method circumscribed in the hypotheses that the persistence of food insecurity in Mozambique is based on the lack of subsidies to strengthen peasant agriculture, as a producer and supplier of food, in favor of large-scale production based on export monoculture; as well as in food vulnerability expressed in the country's political instability in the face of constant internal conflicts, which prevent the State from employing and strengthening assertive policies to combat hunger. As a result of the study, it was concluded that: (i) bilateral cooperation did not have a structuring effect and that it acted only passively based on an assistencialist character; (ii) the projects aimed at the development of the peasantry did not have a multiplier effect on the knowledge acquired; (iii) the instability of Mozambican state capacities reject government initiatives to combat hunger; (iv) and the development of peasant agriculture continues to be the most promising alternative to fight this disease.