China and Brazil’s agricultural cooperation policies in Southern and West Africa represent a break with North-South cooperation, which is burdened by a colonial past and stuck in structural log jams. How are these new South-South aid efforts innovative? This paper offers a comparative analysis of two donor countries—China and Brazil—and examines the efficacy of their planned projects, their selection criteria, the institutional complexity of actors responsible for aid, and the perception of their actions at grassroots level. The “bottom-up” approach of their aid efforts begs a pressing question in Brazil and China: are their own (very different) agricultural models transferrable to Africa?