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Brazil wants to invest in Africa, strengthen economic ties with CPLP countries – ApexBrasil
1:08 CAT | 15 Jun 2023
Photo courtesy: ApexBrasil
The president of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) said yesterday that Brazil was “going back to Africa” and promised to intensify “work with Portuguese-speaking countries”.
“Our origin is Africa and we will return to Africa,” Jorge Viana said during a Brazil-Portugal business seminar attended by dozens of businesspeople, along with the executive secretary of the Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services of Brazil, Ambassador Laudemar Aguiar; the Deputy Secretary of State of the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Mendonça Mendes; the Ambassador of Portugal in Brazil, Luis Faro Ramos; the director of Portugal’s AICEP in Brazil, Francisco Saião Costa; the CEO of EDP Brasil, João Marques da Cruz; the CEO of Galp Brasil, Daniel Elias; the CEO of Galo Brasil, Filipe Gonçalves and others.
The head of the agency that promotes Brazilian products and services abroad (ApexBrasil) regretted that Brazil had been “absent from Africa for seven years”, referring to the previous Brazilian governments of Jair Bolsonaro and Michel Temer.
Now, with the return of Lula da Silva to the Brazilian presidency, Jorge Viana has promised to reinforce the ApexBrasil presence in the CPLP in areas such as “health, technology, mobility and energy”.
Regarding Portugal, Jorge Viana considered it to be a “space in Europe” for Brazil, in a partnership that was also “dormant, but now resumes with great force”.
“Yesterday we experienced a very special moment in this resumption of the Brazil-Portugal relationship,” he said, referring to the celebrations of the ‘Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities’, organized on Monday at the Embassy of Portugal in Brazil.
In the field of health, the president of Fiocruz, Mario Moreira, and Jorge Viana met today to discuss opportunities for cooperation in this area, with a view to supporting African countries.
On the same occasion, António Mendonça Mendes underlined the importance of both ApexBrasil and the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP) taking advantage of the CPLP’s size and space to “enhance investment”.
These statements come at a time when the Brazilian press has reported that the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, wants to reverse Brazil’s previous lack of interest in Africa and is planning two visits to the continent, which will include among its destinations Angola, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe.
According to the Brazilian newspaper ‘O Globo’, which cites diplomatic sources, the objective of the two prospective visits is not only to reverse the previous government’s diplomatic disinterest in Africa, but also to encourage trade between the South American ‘giant’ and the African continent.
“The Brazilian president wants to change the strategy of his foreign policy to encompass the nations of Africa, with a mix of assistance and economic focus,” writes Globo, noting that, in Lula’s last two presidencies, he had visited 23 African countries in the course of 12 trips to the region.
Among the eight countries identified by the newspaper are Portuguese-speaking Angola, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, joined by Senegal, Ghana, Ethiopia and Nigeria, in addition to the reopening of the embassy in Sierra Leone and the creation of additional diplomatic representation in Rwanda.
The absence from Africa practised by the previous government led by Jair Bolsonaro made Brazil favour relations with China, Spain, India, Russia and Turkey, but in Lula da Silva’s agenda, south-south cooperation is more important, O Globo quotes the diplomat as explaining.
Last year, Brazilian exports broke a record of US$12.75 billion (€11.8 billion), just slightly above the US$12.2 billion (€11.2 billion) recorded in 2011, the first year of Dilma Rousseff’s government.
From Africa, Brazil imported products and services worth US$8.5 billion (around €7.8 billion).
Brazil mainly exports sugar, chicken and beef, oil and fuel, corn and soy, importing fertilizers, oil, metals like silver and platinum, chemicals and industrial inputs, according to O Globo.
South Africa is Brazil’s largest customer on the continent, buying goods worth US$1.7 billion (€1.5 billion), followed by Nigeria, with US$875 million (€810 million), and Angola, with US$640 million (€592 million).
Conversely, Brazil’s main suppliers are South Africa, with US$908 million (€840 million) in sales to Brazil, and Angola, with US$766 million (€709 million), according to figures presented by the Brazilian newspaper.
Africa accounts for 3.5% of Brazilian trade, down from 5.9% in 2014, the newspaper notes.
Source: Lusa
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