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As the BRICS countries meet in Johannesburg, the renewal of ties between Brazil and Africa could offer an outlet for ambitious Brazilian firms such as BrazAfric.
August 23rd, 2023,Conversation with Marcos Brandalise
By Stephen Williams
By applying the lessons learned from many decades of food production in Brazil, Brandalise says the firm can help Africa to develop a truly vibrant and profitable agronomy sector.
“There is a huge gap between consumption and production. Africa imports a lot of its food despite all this potential to produce,” says Brandalise.
“I think we are at the right moment with the right solutions. We have the momentum to develop farms, to produce food… We are always bringing new things to the market. And people appreciate that today we are reference point in eastern and central Africa for solutions coming from Brazil.”
Brandalise has come a long way since his first tentative steps into Africa. Having graduated from University of Caxias do Sul in Brazil with a degree in business administration, he joined Transafrik, an aviation cargo company based in Angola. He was subsequently posted to Nairobi, where the company was contracted to the United Nations’ operations in neighboring Somalia. When his contract ended in 1996, he formed BrazAfric.
“I decided to establish myself here. So then I started linking my past in Brazil, with Africa,” he says.
Reshaping African agriculture
Brandalise says his experience of both markets is helping the firm to move beyond mere machinery supply to reshaping the future of agriculture on the continent.
The firm has established several major projects to ramp up its influence. The Co-operative Societies Development Program aims to organise smallholder famers – who account for about 70% of the sector – into cooperatives so that they can access better technologies, training, and trading opportunities, and consequently better incomes and quality of life. Those cooperatives can then access and distribute the machinery that BrazAfric supplies.
