São Paulo – The Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), an organisation connected to the Brazilian Foreign Office (Itamaraty), and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation signed on Tuesday (1) a memorandum of understanding to establish partnerships to assist small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to improve the productivity of their crops and become self-sufficient.
According to the foundation, both institutions should develop projects to stimulate greater productivity and the formation of crops of more nutritious foods in the countryside of the countries benefited by the programme. According to ABC, Brazil will take technology, training and will help those benefited to develop research in the agricultural sector in their countries.
The director at ABC, Marco Farani, said that Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donate US$ 3 billion a year to research and social assistance projects. According to him, the founder of Microsoft now wants to turn part of the organisation’s funds to capacity generation projects and has chosen Brazil as a partner as the country already has knowledge in this kind of project as well as knowledge of tropical agriculture, similar to that of the African nations.
“They believe that Brazil has good practices in the sector, that the country has much to offer and that our work is for technical training,” said the diplomat.
Both the Brazilian agency and the professionals in the foundation should evaluate some countries and choose the first to be benefited. After that has been done, an agreement will be signed with the local government and Brazilian technicians should visit the nation, then helping farmers develop their crops. Investment values have not yet been defined, neither has when the project will take place. Both organisations should make donations to the project.
“The advanced technical capacity of Brazil in the area of agriculture, added to its experience in developing innovative programs for small farmers places the country in a position to work with developing nations in an attempt to reduce poverty,” says the Agricultural Development Director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Sam Dryden.
Apart from signing the memorandum, the foundation donated US$ 2.5 million to another Brazilian government project: the Brazil-Africa Platform for Agricultural Innovation developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), which seeks to increase innovation in agriculture in Africa through joint research with Brazilian and African institutions.
*Translated by Mark Ament
