Brazil

213.9

Population 2022 (Millions)

0.75

HDI Score
2021 (Max. 1)

73.7

SDG Score
2023
(Max. 100)

0.39

Gender Inequality
Index Score
(Max. 1)

23

Internet Inclusivity
Index 2022
(100 countries)

Sources: 1. World Bank (2022), 2, UNDP (2021), 3. Sustainable Development Report (2023), 4. UNDP (2021), 5. Economist Impact (2022)

Overview

As the largest country in South America in terms of land, population and economic output, Brazil has an outsized impact both regionally and globally. With diverse geography ranging from the Amazon Rainforest to mountains and plateaus, this vast country also faces a number of development challenges. These include violence against women and gender disparities, being the county with the 5th highest rate of femicides worldwide. Additionally, despite astonishing economic growth, Brazil is also characterized by extreme income inequality, with the top 1% of households taking an equal share of national income to that of the bottom 50% (some 80 million people). This inequality contributes to a myriad of issues, including violence, instability, and high poverty rates.

Projects

EmpoderaData built upon the success of the “Quantitative Step” (Q-Step) program, which was developed as a strategic response to the shortage of quantitatively-skilled social science graduates in the United Kingdom. Together, University of Manchester and Data-Pop Alliance expanded upon the program’s excellent results, exploring this model in the Global South (specifically in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia) as the “EmpoderaData Project”. This initiative aimed to promote a virtuous cycle of social transformation by fostering data literacy skills applied to addressing our society’s most pressing issues within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In November 2019, Data-Pop Alliance, in partnership with ECLAC and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), conducted its first technical workshop in Rio de Janeiro, tailored specifically to the needs of the staff at IBGE. The goal was to help them to build and strengthen internal capacities to leverage web data collection and analysis in their projects, specifically by delving into web scraping and API’s interaction techniques. ​The workshop emerged as part of the broader training program carried out with ECLAC in the Latin America and Caribbean region: “Big Data for Measuring the Digital Economy”.

In partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), DPA offered a series of workshops focused on “Big Data and the Digital Economy” in the Latin American and Caribbean region. These workshops were designed for development practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. Five editions were delivered in: Santiago de Chile (March 2016), São Paulo (September 2017) —in partnership with Cetic.br—, Mexico City (October 2017) —in collaboration with the National Digital Strategy (EDN) program and the MIT Sloan School of Management—, Santo Domingo (April 2019), and Bogotá (May 2019) —in partnership with DANE.

With over 30,000 confirmed cases, Brazil is currently the country most affected by COVID-19 in Latin America, and ranked 12th worldwide. Despite all evidence, a strong rhetoric undermining risks associated to COVID-19 has been endorsed at the highest levels of the Brazilian government, making President Jair Bolsonaro the leader of the “coronavirus-denial movement”. To support this strategy, different forms of misinformation and disinformation have been leveraged to lead a dangerous crusade against scientific and evidence-based recommendations. The article was published by the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.

Criteria, a project led by Prosperia with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and support from Data-Pop Alliance, is an interactive decision support system that empowers policy-makers to explore, analyze, and take decisions on the basis of a large number of potential designs and targeting schemes for social policies. Criteria uses microsimulations on survey and administrative data to visualize the expected poverty impact of policy alternatives resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their associated costs.

This report analyzed Alipay’s Ant Forest’s exponential growth, its trajectory, and vision to unlock the power of individual behavior change for climate change mitigation. It explained how this green initiative, through digital functions, managed to encourage users to engage in low-carbon activities in their daily life. It estimated that the market size for an innovation such as Alipay Ant Forest was roughly three times the current population of the United States, noting that up to 8.6% of emissions tied to public transportation could be avoided across seven high-emission countries if similar green initiatives were to be implemented over the 2020-2030 period. This project was carried out with the support of the Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance and UNEP Inquiry.

This project, developed in partnership with UNIDAS and GIZ Data Lab, leveraged traditional and non-traditional data sources to assess the reporting capability of women and girls in Mexico City, Bogota and Sao Paulo. The analytical model estimated the probability of registering domestic violence at the locality or municipal level, taking into account personal (e.g. age, educational attainment) and environmental factors (e.g. access to support services, human mobility during the COVID-19 quarantine). The report for Mexico is not available.