Brazilian Cooperation Angency

ABC – Brazilian Cooperation Agency

The Brazilian Cooperation Agency (Agência Brasileira de Cooperação – ABC) is part of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE) and has the mandate to negotiate, coordinate, implement, and monitor the Brazilian technical cooperation programs and projects carried out based on agreements involving Brazil, other countries, and international organisms.

To perform its mission, ABC guides itself by the foreign policy of MRE and by the national development priorities defined in the Government’s plans and programs.

The first initiative to implement an International Technical Cooperation System in Brazil occurred in 1950, when the Brazilian Government created the National Commission for Technical Assistance (CNAT), with representatives of the Planning Secretariat, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other key Ministries. CNAT had the mandate to prioritize the requests from Brazilian institutions seeking technical aid from abroad, provided by industrialized countries with which Brazil kept specific technology transfer agreements under the form of cooperation. Among the legal attributions of CNAT, there were the studies regarding the participation of Brazil in technical assistance programs of the United Nations, and, occasionally, of the Organization of American States.

Nineteen years later, in 1969, a broad institutional reform of the system took place, centralizing, by means of a decree, the basic mandates regarding international technical cooperation (foreign negotiation, planning, coordination, fomentation, and monitoring) at the Planning Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic (SEPLAN) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE). It was already identified at that time a growing volume of official cooperation programs and projects involving Brazil, as beneficiary, and other countries and international organisms, as donors, including foreign nongovernmental organizations. Given the expressive volume of foreign funds made available to the Brazilian education and research institutions, it was then necessary to strengthen the system and adequate the demand to the guidelines and priorities defined by the National Development Plans.

By 1984, the need of a new reexamination of the System management mechanisms had already been outlined in order to provide it with higher managerial efficacy. In fact, the Technical Cooperation System displayed a dual command: The Technical Cooperation Division of Itamaraty and the International Economic and technical Cooperation Undersecretariat (SUBIN). While SUBIN performed the technical functions (project prospecting, analysis, approval and monitoring), the Division was in charge of the technical cooperation political aspects.

The merger of the functions performed by these units – with the extinction of SUBIN and the Technical Cooperation Division, and the creation of ABC – represented an advance in the sense of providing the Country with an Agency specialized in ITC, unifying the technical and foreign policy functions; notwithstanding, the need of proceeding with the definitive structuring in the adopted institutional model persisted.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was an important partner in establishing the agency. It supported ABC in the qualification of human resources, adoption of suitable management techniques for the Brazilian technical cooperation management, implementation of the projects automated monitoring systems, among others. The main objective of this cooperation has always been to strengthen the Agency newly created by the Brazilian Government, subject to a long-term vision of providing the Country with autonomy in the field, without neglecting the attainment of concrete results in the short- and medium- terms.

ABC was created in September 1987 through Decree no. 94973, as part of FUNAG (Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation), affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE). Today, in 2012, as established in the Internal Regulations