CAPES-Move Africa programme boosts South-South HE relations
Higher education is being positioned as a key pillar in the growing relationship between Brazil and Africa, following the launch of the CAPES-Move Africa programme to support the mobility of postgraduate African students to Brazilian universities.
This involves the launch of a scholarship programme for 2,600 masters and doctoral students from Africa to study at Brazilian higher education institutions.
Experts have described the development as a “milestone” in building a permanent cooperation agenda between higher education institutions in Brazil and Africa, including the establishment of a “strategic long-term pillar” in South-South internationalisation policies.
“The programme’s success should be measured not only by the number of students supported, but also by its capacity to generate long-term institutional partnerships, collaborative research agendas and enduring academic networks,” Brazilian internationalisation expert Dr Fernanda Leal said.
The CAPES-Move Africa programme is the first step in implementing the Brasília Charter approved at the first Brazil-Africa rector’s forum that took place in Brasília, Brazil, recently.
Speaking at the event, the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared that the initiative aims to strengthen academic relations between Brazil and the African continent.
He called on Brazilian and African universities to work together to solve common challenges and emphasised that “education is the strongest bridge between Brazil and Africa”.
He added: “Strengthening undergraduate and graduate exchange programmes is essential to consolidating higher education as a pillar of the strategic partnership between Brazil and Africa.”
The forum was organised by Brazil’s Ministry of Education, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), a government agency responsible for quality assurance in undergraduate and postgraduate education in Brazil and the National Association of Directors of Federal Higher Education Institutions (Andifes), with support from Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It was organised to celebrate Africa Liberation Day on 25 May as well as to consolidate strategic alliances in research, technological innovation and professional training.
Towards interconnected educational ecosystems
Professor Oyewole Olusola, the secretary general of the Ghana-based Association of African Universities, said at the event that “higher education is a global ecosystem [where] no region has a monopoly on knowledge. No region has all the solutions and no region should be excluded from global academic conversation.
“We are, therefore, moving from isolated partnerships to interconnected educational ecosystems of cooperation where universities co-create knowledge and jointly address global challenges," Olusola said.
He highlighted the importance of “deepening Africa-Brazil collaboration in higher education, scientific research and technological advancement for driving innovation and sustainable development across our regions.
“As African universities continue to position themselves as engines of transformation, there is a growing need to deepen strategic partnerships with Brazilian universities and institutions,” Olusola said .
The Brasília Charter – a call for action
The Brasília Charter stated: “… representatives of universities, research entities, academic associations, multilateral organisations, funding agencies and Brazilian and African governmental institutions affirm the commitment to strengthen educational, cultural, academic, scientific, technological, institutional and innovation cooperation between Brazil and African countries…
“This forum thus marks our commitment to inaugurate a new era, in which the bond between Brazil and Africa is no longer a repeated promise but rather a continuous, structuring and transformative practice”.
CAPES-Move Africa Programme
Leonardo Barchini, Brazil’s Minister of Education, officially launched a US$47.4 million postgraduate scholarship programme for 2,600 African students – 1,000 masters and 1,600 doctoral students – to study at Brazilian universities and higher education institutions.
“Opening Brazil’s doors to African students deepens our historical ties, expands research networks and strengthens scientific and productive cooperation,” Barchini said.
The collaboration focuses on four strategic areas: agriculture, health, technology, and artificial intelligence and aims to facilitate joint research, the exchange of faculty and students, curriculum development and the mobility of postgraduate students.
The initiative complements existing cooperation mechanisms such as the Brazilian Government Scholarship Programmes, which allow students from partner countries to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies in Brazil.
In Brazil, international or foreign students from Africa are the best represented among all international or foreign students when the available data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD and other partner countries are compared, according to the 2025 overview of the Brazilian education system.
Brasília Charter captures key issues
The Brasília Charter focuses on strategic priorities including the strengthening of academic and scientific networks between Brazil and African countries; the expansion of mobility, both face-to-face and virtual, of undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, administrative personnel and managers; cooperation in teacher training; the promotion of open science mechanisms to share science outputs; and active participation in innovation ecosystems.
In addition, the Brasília Charter focuses on the development of collaborative research, technology and innovation in priority areas, with emphasis, among others, on the fight against hunger and food security; agrarian development, climate change; blue and green economies and digital sovereignty and democratisation.
“Faced with the inequalities that still mark our countries and the urgency of building a shared future, we call on universities, academic networks and other actors to take on an active role in co-creating and immediately implementing joint initiatives, mobilising available resources, overcoming institutional limitations and affirming South-South cooperation as a strategic choice,” the Brasília Charter stressed.
A strategic pillar of internationalisation policies
Leal, secretary of International Relations at Federal University of Santa Catarina (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, or UFSC) in Brazil, an internationalisation scholar, said: “The CAPES-Move Africa programme reflects an emerging, yet highly promising, perspective according to which Brazil recognises the potential of cooperation with the Global South, conceiving South-South cooperation as a strategic pathway for international engagement while continuing to acknowledge the importance of relations with the North.”
Leal added: “The significance of the Brasília Charter and the CAPES-Move Africa programme extends far beyond academic mobility itself. Both initiatives reflect a renewed political and academic commitment to strengthening Brazil–Africa relations through higher education, research and knowledge production.
“Historically, cooperation between Brazil and African countries has often been framed in terms of shared cultural and historical ties.”
Leal noted: “What seems to be emerging now, however, is a more structured effort to translate those ties into sustainable academic partnerships capable of generating collaborative research, institutional cooperation and joint responses to common development challenges.
“In this regard, the most important contribution of these initiatives may not ultimately be measured by the number of students supported or agreements signed but by their ability to establish cooperation as a long-term strategic pillar of internationalisation policies in both Brazil and African countries.”
What does the cooperation signal in the longer term?
Professor Georgina Gonçalves dos Santos, the rector of the Federal University of the Recôncavo of Bahia (UFRB) in Brazil and the vice-president of the official representative body for all Brazilian federal universities, or Andifes, told University World News: “The Brasília Charter represents a milestone in building a permanent agenda for cooperation between higher education institutions in Brazil and Africa, transforming shared intentions into concrete commitments.
“The CAPES-Move Africa programme gives practical expression to this effort by expanding opportunities for academic mobility and strengthening research and advanced training networks,” Dos Santos added.
“Andifes is proud to contribute to this rapprochement, mobilising Brazilian federal universities in support of a strategic partnership based on the joint production of knowledge, innovation and the sustainable development of our societies,” Dos Santos pointed out.
Samir Khalaf Abd-El-Aal, an emeritus research professor at the Biotechnology Research Institute of the National Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt, welcomed the approval of the charter and the launch of the CAPES-Move Africa programme.
“By facilitating higher education for African students, Brazil has historically positioned itself as a benign, collaborative partner in the Global South, distinct from more resource-extractive global powers,” he told University World News.
According to him, the Brasília Charter will build on other joint higher education initiatives that led to the creation of institutions and programmes dedicated to strengthening academic ties with Africa, including the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony UNILAB).
“The implementation of the Brasília Charter will be facilitated by the fact that Brazil maintains a historical relationship with Africa, strengthened by demographic makeup, characterised by the presence of a large Afro-descendant population which reflects a history shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, forced migration and centuries of exchanges across the Atlantic,” said Abd-El-Aal.
Towards sustainable institutional relations
Leal, who is also a postdoctoral researcher at the State University of Santa Catarina, told University World News that if it is to achieve its broader objectives, the CAPES-Move Africa should not, under any circumstances, “become an isolated internationalisation initiative focused solely on individual student mobility.
“One concrete challenge in cooperation between Brazilian and African universities, which the Brazil-Africa Rectors’ Forum sought to address, is the relatively limited number of formal cooperation agreements between institutions on both sides,” Leal said.
“Although Brazil hosts a considerable number of African students who typically come to Brazil to complete full degree programmes through government initiatives, the majority of them are not formally linked to African universities.
“Because of the different levels of development among graduate education and research systems in Brazil and across African countries, the CAPES-Move Africa programme must ensure that cooperation remains genuinely reciprocal and collaborative, rather than reproducing asymmetrical relationships.
“Thus, efforts must be made to ensure that collaboration is institutional, structured and capable of placing participating universities and researchers in meaningful and sustained dialogue… From a more operational perspective, it is essential that information about the programme be widely disseminated among Brazilian universities and graduate programmes, which must be adequately prepared in all respects to receive visiting African students,” she noted.
“It is also necessary to advance the understanding of South-South cooperation as a strategic pathway for the international engagement of the Global South.
“Intentional efforts to establish genuinely reciprocal relationships that move beyond the traditional one-way logic of knowledge and training flows often associated with South-North relations are essential. Otherwise, there is a risk of reproducing existing hierarchies and dependencies under a different framework,” Leal said.