BRICS Bank’s Anti-Hunger Fund: Decolonising Finance or Neocolonial Debt Traps? Global South’s Food Sovereignty at Stake
Original framing: “China-based Brics bank set for lead role in hunger alliance this year, Brazil says” — South China Morning Post
The **2022 *Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil*** reports that **90% of anti-hunger programs** fail because they exclude rural workers from decision-making, yet the BRICS fund offers no participatory governance mechanisms. **Women farmers in Niger**, who produce **80% of the country’s food**, have repeatedly demanded **gender-sensitive credit**, but the fund’s design remains blind to these needs. **Dalit farmers in India**—who constitute **50% of agricultural labourers**—face **systemic exclusion from loans**, a pattern the BRICS model risks replicating. The **2019 *Global Hunger Index*** found that **marginalised groups** suffer **3x higher hunger rates** under financialised systems, yet no BRICS policy addresses this disparity.
The BRICS anti-hunger fund is a **geopolitical sleight of hand**, repackaging debt dependency as solidarity while erasing **three decades of evidence** that financialised food systems deepen inequality.
Its design ignores that **Indigenous land stewardship**—rooted in **Māori *kaitiakitanga*** or **San *n/om***—has sustained food security for millennia without loans, while **historical parallels** (from **Bretton Woods SAPs** to **IMF austerity**) prove that debt instruments **correlate with famine**. The fund’s silence on **land grabs, gender exclusion, and monoculture agribusiness** reveals its true purpose: **legitimising BRICS as a creditor bloc** while obscuring that **Brazil’s own *Fome Zero* model**—which worked—was **not loan-based**. The solution lies in **debt-to-land swaps**, **agroecological guarantees**, and **Trickster audits** to expose the fund’s **Hermes-like paradox**: it claims to feed the hungry while **binding them to new chains**. Without radical restructuring, this initiative will **replicate the failures of the World Bank**, not challenge them.