Brazil’s African Samba

By Asoka Ranaweera

The writer is the founder and CEO of a company that advises investors on structuring investments and developing projects in West, East and Central Africa

As former President Lula liked to say, Brazil has the second largest black population in the world after Nigeria. Up to 50% of the country’s 180 million population can trace their heritage to Africa, whose labour Lula acknowledged has contributed greatly in making Brazil what it is today.

Arguably, Lula left office as one of the most popular world leaders amongst Africans. In the process Lula ensured that Brazil’s overall stock in Africa will be held high for years to come.

However, Brazil’s elevated profile, and engagement in Africa is relatively and surprisingly new. In the post Second World War period Brazil frequently supported the position of Africa’s colonial powers. It was commercial considerations that in the end moved Brazil to engage African countries in the mid 1960s, a period when there were considerable issues of interest to Brazil related to the international coffee trade.

In the 1970s Brazil began to pay much more attention to African countries with whom it had a common linguistic and cultural history. Between 1974 and 1979, Brazil recognized the independence of five Portuguese speaking African countries, these were: Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe.

In fact Brazil was the first country to officially recoganize Angola’s independence, which marked a turn around of sorts for the country, then a staunch ally of the United States in the cold war, because the newly formed government was comprised of the independence movement known as the MPLA, whose origins were Marxist.

In a twenty year span between 1974 and 1994, Brazil’s relationship with African countries expanded greatly and with it commercial relations. However, advances in the Brazil and Africa relationship were somewhat uneven, it was really the arrival of President Lula that added drive and momentum to the relationship.

Looking at it in purely commercial terms in 1972, Brazil’s total trade with Africa was worth approximately $243 million and by 2008, two way trade was around $26 billion, with most of that increase originating during the Lula presidency.

So, what explains, the exponential increase in political and economic relations? President Lula came into office with a strong bias for expanding south-south relations. In this instance, Africa was a natural choice for him, for amongst other reasons because of their shared history, and also because he espoused many themes that were popular amongst Africans such finding solutions to development that were more self directed than those suggestions that had been put forth by the west but had failed.

During Lula’s term in office he visited about 25 African countries, spending time to promote Brazil’s companies and commercial interest especially in countries like Angola and Mozambique. Today, Brazil is by far Angola’s biggest investor and is a significant player in Mozambique as well, where Vale is developing, a coal mine, that will likely make the country the second largest exporter of the mineral after South Africa in Africa.

Brazil has also extensively promoted its industrial and agro enterprises in Africa. And African companies and countries have embraced south-south technology to help them build their economies with zeal. In addition to this, many, African countries are looking at the way Brazil developed cheap medicines in order to help fight many diseases, not least of, which HIV/AIDs, which has wrecked havoc on many countries, particularly, in southern Africa.

With Lula recently departed from Brazil’s presidency, many Africans will be hoping that his legacy of promoting closer and warmer engagement will endure through his successor Ms. Dilma Rousseff. Whether or not that will be the case remains to be seen. However, at least for now, the momentum Lula has given to Brazil-Africa relations is likely to endure.

For Africans this momentum has meant several important things. For one, they have found support internationally for many of their causes from an important and growing regional power in organizations such as the United Nations. It has also brought more choice in terms of investments for several African countries who for too long relied on companies from traditional African powers such as Europe and the U.S. It has also enabled African countries to create more competition for its resources and markets as Brazil offers alternatives to countries such as China and Russia.

Through Lula’s engagement Brazilian companies have entered new markets and are establishing themselves as significant players in Africa’s development. They are developing new skills and gaining knowledge of operating in foreign markets. And their presence in Africa at a relatively early stage in the continents new found socio-economic development should serve its companies well in the future.

However, most of Brazil’s engagement is still directed mostly towards former Portuguese speaking colonies, something that naturally fits within their linguistic and cultural comfort zones. Therefore, Brazil’s real and full impact in Africa is yet to be fully felt. For now at least it seems that Lula’s legacy seems well entrenched and established, ensuring that Brazil’s African samba is likely to continue for some time to come.