President Lula arrived in Angola on Thursday night (24) with hopes to expand Brazil’s cooperation with the African continent. The country’s chain of trade with Africa rose by 33.7% in 2022 (a total of US$ 21.3 billion) compared to 2021 (US$ 15.9 billion). Nevertheless, it is below expectations compared to 2012, when the chain of trade was almost US$ 30 billion.
Lula has been in the African continent since the beginning of the week to attend the BRICS Summit, in Johannesburg. On the day of his arrival in the South African capital city, he said it is “unacceptable” the current stage of trade between the two countries. He also said that the free trade zone project under discussion in the continent is “ambitious” and “full of opportunities for Brazilian products, such as food and beverages, oil, iron ore, vehicles and iron and steel manufactures.”
Brazil's trade flow with African countries corresponds to only 3.5% of its foreign trade. The Brazilian government assesses the network of trade agreements between the two regions as incipient.
The president's focus is on diversifying the products since the Brazilian exports is formed mainly by food due to the “considerable retrogression in the export of vehicles, machines and equipment, in parallel to the decrease in diplomatic rapprochement”, explains Igor Castellano, professor at the Department of Economics and International Relations at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM). For him, the foreign promotion of high-value-added products “requires political activism and mutual confidence”, something that was not a priority during the governments of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro.
As a result, Brazil lost ground to “big global competitors, such as China, India and the USA, but also medium-scale competitors, such as Turkey, Belgium, Holland and South Korea in the list of main suppliers of products to the continent.” These countries have established solid and long-term partnerships with the African continent.
On the other hand, Angolans export oil, predominantly. Castellano says that the Angolan government knows that it needs to reduce its economic dependence on this good to face future shortages, as do several countries in the Persian Gulf, for instance. An alternative would be to use knowledge and technologies associated with the green economy as a core for developing other agricultural, industrial and service economic sectors, “something that China has wisely done”.
This week, Lula mentioned that Brazil and many African countries have “broad” plans to renew their energy matrices so that they preserve their tropical forests and biodiversity and fight desertification.
To Castellano, “economies dependent on hydrocarbon export have structural difficulties in directing these resources to broader social development and the diversification of the economy. This move demands long-term planning and huge political efforts to become real. Whether this will materialize depends a lot on the correlation of political forces in Angola regarding the interest in bearing the costs of this transition, in addition to Brazil's willingness to carry out the projects and transfer crucial technologies in the cooperation."
He assesses that Lula’s bet will “use a quite relevant tool to encourage foreign developing partners and horizontal technical cooperation. It will also seek to share with Angola the experiences of the energy transition process Brazil is trying to implement internally”.
From Cerrado to Savannah
At the BRICS Summit, the Brazilian president also highlighted African countries' potential to produce their own food. “Africa has 65% of the world’s arable areas and a strong vocation to be an agricultural power, able to feed its peoples and provide solutions to global food security.
Lula cited, too, modern techniques focused on tropical agriculture developed by Brazil and that can be replicated, such as the agricultural productivity process developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa, in Portuguese) in the Cerrado biome, which could be useful to the African Savannah.
To debate the reestablishment of trade with the continent, Brazil gathered in Johannesburg the heads of the trade promotion sectors of all its representations in African countries last June. Brazil stated that the Brazilian foreign policy is committed to political and economic relations with African countries and societies, and there will be a correspondence between the diplomatic routine and the real encouragement by the federal government in providing financial, human and institutional resources, besides the political legitimacy to mobilize trade relations.
Presidential meetings
Lula was received in Luanda, Angola’s capital city, by Angolan President João Lourenço and the National Assembly. He will attend a seminar and a business event with about 60 Brazilian businessmen and businesswomen. On Sunday, he finishes his tour through Africa at the 14th Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP, in Portuguese) in Sao Tome and Principe’s capital, Sao Tome.
Edited by: Nadini Lopes e Patrícia de Matos
