Businesses from the Rising Powers: Traditional or Progressive Development Partners for Africa?

From:: Department for International Development
Published: 1 January 2015

Country:: Brazil, South Africa, Russia
Document Type:: Country Report
Theme:: Social Change
Authors:: Navas-Alemán, L.

Abstract

This study will provides original material on the lesser-known presence of businesses from a subset of the BRICS as potential partners for development in Africa. Based on interviews with firms from Brazil, Russia and South Africa as well as the review of secondary material, the report sections discuss a variety of activities deployed by these firms in Africa, which they consider to be developmental, and the justification behind them. Section 2 reports on the case of Brazilian firms operating in Africa; Sections 3 and 4 do the same for South Africa and Russia, respectively. Section 5 summarises how the operations of Chinese and Indian firms are viewed in the literature with regard to their corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement (used as a proxy for ‘developmental engagement’) and compares those views with the evidence provided in this study for the other three BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia and South Africa. Section 6 concludes.

Citation

Navas-Alemán, L. Businesses from the Rising Powers: Traditional or Progressive Development Partners for Africa? Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK (2015) 57 pp. [IDS Evidence Report 156]