Brazil’s tech innovations

Brazil does have some fascinating aspects to it. The country has a large reserve of natural resources. It is on its way to displace France as the world’s fifth-largest economy, after the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany, and ahead of United Kingdom. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Brazil is larger than those of the […]

Brazil does have some fascinating aspects to it. The country has a large reserve of natural resources. It is on its way to displace France as the world’s fifth-largest economy, after the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany, and ahead of United Kingdom. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Brazil is larger than those of the other South American countries combined. Its GDP grew 7% in 2010. The Brazilian aerospace company Embraer is the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, after Boeing and Airbus, although the first two, Boeing (.U.S.) and Airbus (France), are much more dominant (41% and 39% market share, respectively, while Embraer is a paltry 6%). The country is the location of the largest discovery of oil in the world.
Brazil has no nuclear power and hasn’t fought a war since 1870. Some Brazilians wonder: “May be God is Brazilian,” because of the love of peace and the harmony in the country. In fact, Brazil is so peaceful that I don’t think it has any significant allocations to defense in its 2014 budget. If it does, the number doesn’t show up, as a percent of GDP. Now compare that situation to that in Brazil’s fellow BRIC countries, which, according to Aviation Week magazine of 30 December 2013 to 6 January 2014, have an estimated defense budget of $76.7 billion (Russia), $46 billion (India), and $126 billion (China); which, respectively constitute 3.4%, 2.5%, and 1.41% of the GDP. For reference, the estimated defense allocation for 2014 by the U.S. is $847 billion (4.4% of GDP) and $53.6 billion (2.5%) for the United Kingdom. So, it seems Brazilians would rather be developing their country and enjoying themselves, than fighting wars!
BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China. These are basically developing countries that are believed to be at a similar stage of economic development, and are also considered to be more developed than the other developing countries like Nigeria. The acronym “BRICS” has also been coined to include South Africa in the pack. There are various opinions about the prospects of the BRIC countries, with one suggestion that they might overtake the G7 economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and U.S.) by 2027. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are more conservative, and have suggested that it’s only around 2050 that the combined economies of the BRIC countries could exceed those of the G7 countries. Even then, the BRIC countries have to be developing radically and continuously for this event to occur. The BRIC countries occupy a quarter of the world’s land area and more that 40% of the world population in 2010, but they accounted for only 25% of the world gross national income.  (Last year, the acronym “MINT” was also created to lump Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey together, as they are deemed to be in a similar level of economic development.)
So, Brazil is not first-world yet and, to quote Steve Kroft in his 60 Minutes segment on CBS TV station in New York two weeks ago, “Third-world is never far away” for Brazil, a reference to the pervasive slums and the infrastructure problems in that country, where 90% of the roads are unpaved! Nevertheless, the country does have a plan to move up.
In the area of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Brazil is not as well-known as its other BRIC partners (India, China, or Russia). However, like Nigeria, the country is always very quick to adopt new technologies. Brazil’s network equipment came from different sources outside the country: Cisco Systems (U.S.), Juniper Networks, Inc. (U.S.), Huawei (China), Alcatel-Lucent (France). However, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) leak of last year has caused Brazil to re-examine its ICT strategies. Allegations that the U.S. was snooping on various countries in South America prompted Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to cancel a state visit to Washington in protest. Moreover, Brazil now wants to empower local ICT companies so that the country would not need to depend on foreign companies for its network equipment. Cisco Systems and Huawei are the losers in this battle with Washington, as Brazil’s government is now planning to put its resources on smaller, but local, companies. Thus, the winners are Brazilian network equipment companies such as Datacom and Padtec, both of which already have had business relationships with the state-owned Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras, S.A. The idea of course is that Brazil can ensure greater protection against “back-door security holes” that are potentially the problems in foreign-made products.
There are innovations coming out of Brazil. The country’s own aerospace industry (Embraer) flies on home-grown technology, a feat that China is aggressively trying to achieve. Embraer is said to have its eyes set on building Brazil’s first geostationary satellite, to enhance the country’s telecommunication, remote-imaging, and weather-prediction capabilities. Brazil also prides itself on its online-voting and banking systems. The IT sector was reported to have earned almost $37 billion in revenues in 2012. Stefanini is Brazil’s largest IT services company, with operations in numerous countries of the world, including Canada, China, India, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom. Stefanini aggressively expands its portfolio via acquisitions of companies all over the world. The company recently established a new software development centre in Jilin, China. Apontador is the leading geo-location-service company in Brazil, developing tools that enable other companies see how users interact with their products. The São Paulo-based Predicta is also well-ranked in Brazil, as a company that develops tools for website optimization.
The idea in this article is that Brazil is aggressively pursuing the development of local tech contents.