Brazil's Africa Strategy

Role Conception and the Drive for International Status

C. Stolte

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137499578
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book analyzes Brazil's Africa engagement as a rising power's strategy to gain global recognition, linking it to Brazil's broader foreign policy objectives and shedding light on the mechanisms of Brazilian status-seeking in Africa.

Chapter 1

Introduction: A South American Power Making Inroads into Africa

Brazil has been making international headlines over the past few years. As “B” in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and host country for a whole number of major international events, the rising South American power has received a lot of international attention and has attracted increasing international investment. Bidding for and hosting international events like the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) (2012), the World Youth Day (2013), the FIFA World Cup (2014), and the Olympics (2016) Brazil has become an increasingly visible actor in the international arena since the presidency of Lula da Silva (2003–2010). Yet, not all of the increased international activism that has marked Brazil’s foreign policy since the turn of the millennium has been as visible as the hosting of international mega events. Other actions have been less in the focus of the international media but have been just as important and impressive.

In the shadow of other emerging powers’ engagement in Africa, Brazil has significantly enhanced its presence on the African continent over the past ten years. While international media and academia ­discussed the merits and dangers of China’s engagement with Africa and the beginning inroads of India into the continent, the South ­American power pursued an equally active but less noticed Africa approach and quietly established itself as a new player on the African continent.

Under the administration of President Lula da Silva, Brazil actively deepened its relations with African countries and made the neighboring continent a foreign policy priority. As a manifestation of Brazil’s strong interest in Africa, President Lula visited 29 countries on 12 journeys and opened 20 new embassies all over the African continent (MRE 2010b, 2011a). In contrast to his predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002) who closed Brazilian embassies in Africa and showed only limited interest in forging ties with Brazil’s South Atlantic neighborhood, Lula extended Brazil’s diplomatic presence well beyond the traditional partners in Lusophone and West Africa. Under his leadership, the number of Brazilian embassies on African soil more than doubled, reaching the number of 37 in 2011 (up from 17 embassies in 2002) (MRE 2010b; Exman 2013).

Along with his diplomatic offensive, Lula da Silva also launched a number of political initiatives in order to institutionalize the new relationship between Africa and his country. One of the most prominent newly created initiatives in this respect is the biannual Africa–South America Summit (ASA Summit) that brings together the 66 heads of state of the two continents to discuss common challenges and possibilities for cooperation. Further initiatives aiming at the intensification of the relationship between Brazil and Africa include the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (CPLP), an organization uniting the Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé, and Principe)¹ as well as the trilateral India–Brazil–South Africa Forum (IBSA Forum), designed to enhance relations with the Regional Powers of South Africa and India. Under the Lula administration, Brazil also forged closer ties with the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Furthermore, the Brazilian administration initiated a series of issue-specific organizations and dialogue forums, such as the Cotton-4 Initiative with the four cotton-producing countries of Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Chad or the “Brazil-Africa Dialogue on food security, fight against hunger and rural development” (MRE 2010b).

Parallel to the deepening of political ties, the past decade has also witnessed an unprecedented growth in economic relations between the South American country and the African continent. In fact, ­Brazil’s trade with Africa increased more than sixfold between 2000 and 2011, rising from US$ 4.2 billion to US$ 27.6 billion (MDIC 2012a). In order to further stimulate Brazil’s economic involvement in Africa, the government-funded Brazilian National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) has granted special loans to companies willing to invest in African countries (World Bank/IPEA 2011:5; BNDES 2012).

Noteworthy was also Brazil’s decision to relieve African countries’ debts of more than US$ 1 billion—a move all the more remarkable as the South American country at the beginning of President Lula’s first term still struggled to pay back its own debts to the International Monetary Fund (Rizzi et al. 2011, cited in World Bank/IPEA 2011:42). Remarkably, Brazil, still being a recipient of development assistance, has emerged as a provider of technical assistance to African countries. With more than half of the total resources of Brazilian technical cooperation going to Africa, the continent has become the main focus of Brazil’s development aid (World Bank/IPEA 2011:43; ABC 2010a:6–7).

Considering the vast series of political and economic initiatives launched by the Lula administration to forge ties with Brazil’s poor neighboring continent, it becomes clear that Brazil made Africa one of its foreign policy priorities (Da Silva 2006a). The motivation for this turn to Africa, however, is less evident.

Why does a South American power get involved in Africa? Why does a country, considered to be a Regional Power (Flemes 2010b; Soares de Lima 2007) engage in a foreign continent? Brazil’s turn to Africa is even more puzzling considering the fact that Africa does not belong to Brazil’s major trade partners. Indeed, the whole continent accounted for only 5.1 percent of Brazil’s foreign trade when the Lula government took office in 2003. Economic interchange with the total of 54 African countries was still less important than trade with single-trade partners like Germany (5.5 percent) and in no comparison with Brazil’s then most important trade partner, the United States, which accounted for more than one-fifth of Brazil’s total trade (21.64 percent) at that time (MDIC 2003a–c). In addition, Africa cannot be considered an important player on the international stage that would make for a powerful ally in world affairs. In fact, the continent is not represented at the UN Security Council and is considered one of the most crisis prone regions of the world.

Against this background, the question arises, what is Brazil looking for in Africa? What is it that makes Africa such an interesting partner for Brazil? What is Brazil’s motivation to engage in the continent?

Approaches to Brazilian Foreign Policy

Against the background of a “trend of regionalization of world politics” after the Cold War (Katzenstein 2005; Acharya 2007; ­Breslin/Darrell/Phillips 2002), literature on Brazil’s foreign policy, until recently, mainly focused on Brazil’s regional role. This trend was reinforced by Brazil’s new foreign policy priority for its South ­American neighborhood after the country’s return to democracy in 1985 (Hurrell 2008). In the light of an emerging regional architecture initiated and shaped to a great part by Brazil, the main focus was put on questions concerning Brazil’s capability and willingness to act as a leading Regional Power (Soares de Lima 2007; Gratius 2007; Varas 2008). Considering regional leadership as a prerequisite for a more influential role in world politics, Brazil’s decision to ascribe foreign policy priority to its regional neighborhood has been commonly interpreted as a strategy to gain more international weight (Soares de Lima/Hirst 2006; Flemes 2007).

With regard to Brazil’s global role, literature in particular stressed the South American power’s ability to forge interest coalitions among developing countries. This coalition building capability, labeled by President Lula as “New Multilateralism of the South,” has been identified as a main feature of Brazil’s foreign policy under his administration (Soares de Lima/Hirst 2006). In this context, the South American country has been regarded as a speaker of the global South, with Brazil’s strategy of South-South coalition building being commonly interpreted as an instrument to enhance Brazil’s bargaining power in international negotiations and to balance against the established powers (Herz 2011). However, analysis of this feature of Brazilian foreign policy has so far only focused on Brazil’s acting in international institutions (United Nations, World Trade Organization, etc.) without reflecting on special regional affinities (e.g., Africa) in Brazil’s “New Multilateralism of the South.”

Largely overlooked in this context is also the fact that Brazil does not only forge coalitions with other countries of the South, but does increasingly act as a provider of technical assistance in precisely those countries. To be sure, literature on development cooperation does increasingly focus on Brazil’s role as an emerging aid player (Cabral/Weinstock 2010a; World Bank/IPEA 2011). Yet, this rather policy-oriented literature does not analyze Brazil’s involvement in Africa as a central building block of the country’s foreign policy strategy, but rather aims at assessing the quality of Brazil’s aid programs and its implications for the international aid architecture. In general, evaluations of Brazil’s cooperation programs tend to be very positive, characterizing the country’s development cooperation practices as relatively effective and less interest-driven than those of other emerging aid players such as China (Schläger 2007).

This appraisal of Brazilian technical cooperation is especially interesting, when looking at another—somewhat contradicting—strand of literature that deals with Brazil’s increasing economic involvement in Africa. Studies concerning the economic aspects of Brazil’s new presence in Africa highlight the South American country’s growing presence in the African resource sector and point to the fact that economic ties with the continent have grown especially with resource-rich countries (Freemantle/Stevens 2009). In fact, trade statistics show that Brazil’s most important trading partners in Africa are all large oil exporting countries (MDIC 2010; MRE 2012). What is more, Brazilian companies entering the African continent are mainly companies involved in mining and drilling (MRE 2010b). Against this background, Brazil’s involvement in Africa is interpreted as being motivated primarily by resource interests (Freemantle/Stevens 2009).

In contrast, Brazilian academic literature on the country’s turn to Africa particularly accentuates the cultural affinity between the South American country and its neighboring continent as a motive for ­Brazil’s Africa policy. Treating Brazil’s Africa policy rather as an “intermestic” issue, some Brazilian analysts tend to link the country’s grown interest in Africa to the strengthening of the Afro-Brazilian movement in Brazil and the Brazilian society’s “rediscovery” of its African roots (Lechini 2008; Saraiva 2002). They emphasize the fact that Brazil is home to the world’s second biggest African population after ­Nigeria and point to the growing effort of the Brazilian ­government to stimulate the social and economic integration of Afro-Brazilians into ­Brazilian society through affirmative action measures (Saraiva 2010). Hence, in this context, Brazil’s rapprochement with Africa is seen as a complementary element to its domestic policy.

A small but growing number of studies analyze Brazil’s Africa policy in a more comprehensive manner, taking into account the various aspects and motives of Brazil’s turn to Africa. These summary-like studies (Maihold 2007; Seibert 2009; Visentini 2009; Macondes 2011) subsume the above-mentioned cultural, political, and economic facets of the Brazilian Africa policy and identify three core motivation factors: economic interest, the search for international partners, and cultural affinity based on common history (De la Fontaine/Seifert 2010; White 2010). Brazil’s growing involvement in Africa is thus explained as being driven by an interest in Africa’s natural resources, the motive of winning over African countries as partners for foreign policy initiatives in the context of Brazil’s “Multilateralism of the South,” and the sense of sharing a common cultural ground.

All in all, the above-mentioned threesome of economic, political, and cultural motives is broadly accepted as comprehensive explanation for Brazil’s turn to Africa, as reflected by the growing number of publications that refer to this motivation mix. Yet, this seemingly broad explanation is only comprehensive and convincing at first glance.

This becomes especially clear when looking at Brazil’s assumed resource interests. To be sure, Brazil’s current trade pattern with Africa seems to unequivocally prove the country’s focus on natural resources: Brazil’s most important trading partners on the continent are all resource-rich countries. Oil and other natural resources make up for almost 90 percent of Brazil’s imports from Africa (MRE 2012), and the big Brazilian companies investing in the continent are predominantly involved in the resource sector. However, as Brazil is already a big exporter of natural resources and finds itself on the way to becoming a major oil producer, the motive of “resource interests” is not really convincing when looking behind the facade of the ­stereotype image of a resource-hungry BRICS country (Stolte 2012, 2013).

Equally, Brazil’s assumed political interest in Africa is not fully convincing, when taking a closer look at this motive. At first sight, of course, the Brazilian attempt to gain support by African countries for its initiatives and positions in international negotiations seems more than obvious. A continent of 54 countries and corresponding voting weight in international institutions is clearly interesting for a country in search of coalition partners and ways to ga...