Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century: From Surge to Downturn and Beyond [1st ed.] 9783030557195, 9783030557201

Citation preview

Mathias Alencastro Pedro Seabra  Editors

Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century From Surge to Downturn and Beyond

Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century

Mathias Alencastro • Pedro Seabra Editors

Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century From Surge to Downturn and Beyond

Editors Mathias Alencastro Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP) São Paulo, Brazil

Pedro Seabra Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) Centro de Estudos Internacionais Lisbon, Portugal

ISBN 978-3-030-55719-5    ISBN 978-3-030-55720-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword: Africa Is Here

If you are not Brazilian and yet you are interested in reading about Brazil–Africa relations, maybe you should first acknowledge your ethnic background. If you are not an African or a citizen of African descent, you have probably been introduced to 300 or 400 years of history that has turned Brazil into a racial democracy and the second largest black country in the world, after Nigeria. But if you are a black person, you must have noticed that Brazilian Foreign Policy towards Africa is an all-­ white male business, romantically developed after a rich African cultural heritage, outrageously overlooking the relevance of race or colour in the construction of bilateral ties. Three decades dwelling on Brazil–African relations – a close witness, then, to a substantial part of it since Brazilian redemocratization – allows me to claim that the full understanding of this earlier statement needs to be at the centre of any discussion and assessment of the Brazilian Foreign Policy towards Africa, including in this century. It should not be different in this book, and the opening chapter by Leonardo Marques and Thiago Krause, “The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations,” wisely alerts that, after suppression of the traffic, in the mid-nineteenth century, Brazilian intellectual and political elites sought to forget the continent that had “forcibly supplied most of the migrants responsible for settling Brazil.” Theirs is an attentive view of Brazil–Africa relations, usually reviewed either from a proud black or an unassuming white perspective. Marques and Krause expose a new flow of arguments, which I call “an attentive view,” probably inaugurated in Brazil by Prof. José Flávio Sombra Saraiva, where both Brazilians of African descent and the Brazilian whites are recognized as subjects and co-actors in the making of Brazil– Africa relations. It is not either or, but rather one and another – white and black Brazilians competing not only for the narrative but mainly for shaping these bilateral relations. The authors are right to stress this tension of narratives at the very beginning of the book, inviting readers to be aware of possible changes in Brazilian Foreign Policy towards Africa in the twenty-first century. In most of the other topics covered by this book, the race issue may be blurred or, as Laura Trajber Waisbich states in her discussion on the participation of civil v

vi

Foreword: Africa Is Here

s­ ociety in the Brazil–Africa agenda, “a particularly acute missing link has been the issue of race. (…) this dimension was not systematically singled-out in Brazilian SSC initiatives with Africa.” As a matter of fact, this specific dimension has not been singled-out in any initiatives with Africa, except maybe in the cultural domain, because Brazil–Africa relations have not been racialized. Tommie Shelby, in We Who Are Dark (2005), recognizes race is a concept under attack, which is being rejected in order to undermine black solidarity. This is particularly relevant when Brazilian SSC and bilateral partnerships are under evaluation, and black solidarity may be translated into collective efforts not only against racism and racial inequalities, but also as an instrument to improve the quality of life for all people of African descent, Brazilians included. Projecting race over the agenda of Brazil–Africa relations could rightfully lead to deeper black solidarity and political unity. It could even turn Brazil–Africa relations once and for all into a state policy instead of a government policy. State policies require broad and consensual support around national interests. The agenda of cooperation in the health sector, for instance, could be a strong pillar to this support. The domestic response to HIV/AIDs in Brazil, as Danilo Marcondes recalls, made it possible for Brazil to set the tone on how to address the disease. A new paradigm was internationally set and Brazil could benefit from exporting and broadly promoting it, together with the Brazilian proposal for the recognition of access to drugs as a human right, as accepted by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the endorsement, among others, of African countries. Technology transfer for ARV production was quickly perceived as the best way to do it. A rough road to be followed, though, by players, both in Brazil as well as in Africa, who had to face too many challenges. Marcondes sheds light on common weaknesses perceived among such players. Barnaby Dye calls it naivety! A poor perception of African agency. A clear misperception and wrong assumptions of Africa and African complexity arising from “structural issues (…) such as the lack of (…) an intellectual tradition of studying the continent.” The Brazilian diplomatic discourse praising African heritage, historic ties and a huge Afro-Brazilian population unravels as void of real content. A fairy tale conceived to charm the leaders of the newly independent African countries in the 1960s and 1970s has continued to captivate Brazilian elites, government officials as well as economic agents but eventually fell short of results, because there is little truth in it. Lack of intellectual tradition could suitably be rephrased as historic prejudice against Africa and Africans, as perceived in the twenty-first century. Brazil’s own prejudice and racism was being projected overseas. The boom of Brazilian presence in Africa in the current century turned into a burst bubble as Robertṣ I. Rotberg proclaims in his Conclusion. Economic diplomacy, increased trade, military concerns with security threats or trade opportunities with military equipment, and even the concurrency of allies under the CPLP agenda could not prevent what the editors consider to be a downturn in bilateral relations. A downturn following the unveiling of practices associated with the collusion between business and politics in Brazilian Foreign Policy, as argued by

Foreword: Africa Is Here

vii

Mathias Alencastro in his chapter about the Brazilian company Odebrecht and Lula da Silva, or, as pointed out by Adriana Schor, in the aftermath of the end of a commodity boom cycle and a lack of trade integration between Brazil and SubSaharan Africa. I assume that the emphasis on the failure and downturn of Brazil–African relations reflects the frustration and the bitter taste of delusion. It may be a passionate assessment based on expectations derived from the traditional all-white agenda. In 2002, when Lula won the presidential elections in Brazil, relations with Africa were not a relevant issue in the campaign, except for social movements in Brazil, particularly those groups in civil society promoting an internal agenda against racism and in favour of racial equality. Those groups gathered around Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores). By that time, the African continent was rising to a new era (the African renaissance) and, in 2001, the international community had approved a Declaration against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. In the twenty-first century, for the first time, Brazil-Africa relations were presented as a priority in Brazil’s international agenda based on the platform of national stakeholders who were new to the corridors of power. The so-called Black Movement had put Africa in the Brazilian Foreign Policy agenda. This was a huge innovation and, although the assessment of current Brazil–Africa relations must take into consideration its complexity, it also requires further research and discussions on its premises and internal legitimacy. From a Brazilian point of view, since the beginning of Lula’s presidency, Brazil– Africa relations were largely enriched by the participation and association of many new players, from public agencies and civil society organizations to think tanks and financial dealers, thus starting to fill a gap of knowledge and experience that, in the end, certainly compromised Lula’s push towards Africa. There were significant gains in the exposure of Africa to Brazilians, with consistent accumulation of inputs regarding African diversity, talent and potential. This is not irrelevant for a country whose population, or around 53% of it, reclaims its African ancestry. No other country in the world can frame its relations with Africa from a similar perspective. If this is a valid premise for the assessment of Brazil–Africa relations, the twenty-­ first century represents a new era – hopefully a golden era – when racial solidarity may remind us that Africa is here and there is no way out of it. São Paulo, Brazil  Irene Vida Gala June 2020

Acknowledgements

This edited volume comprises a direct output of the conference “What happened to Brazil’s African strategy?,” which took place on 24–25 April 2019 at the Institute of International Relations, São Paulo University (IRI-USP – Instituto de Relações Internacionais  – Universidade de São Paulo), São Paulo, Brazil, where all the contributors presented early drafts of their chapters. We thank all the participants, moderators and audience for the valuable comments and feedback during the 2 days of work proceedings. We also acknowledge the generous support of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel Agency (CAPES – Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), which allowed for the organization of such an even in the first place. Individual support was also provided throughout different stages of the editing process by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP – Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) and the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) under grants 2017/13092-1 and SFRH/ BPD/116700/2016, respectively.

ix

Contents

 Introduction: Turnaround and Let-Down – Making Sense of Brazil and Africa after the Surge ��������������������������������������������������������������    1 Mathias Alencastro and Pedro Seabra The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960) ��������������������    9 Leonardo Marques and Thiago Krause  From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   25 Pedro Seabra Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018) ������������������������������   43 Adriana Schor Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola ��������   55 Mathias Alencastro Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?����������������   73 Barnaby Joseph Dye  Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical Production in Mozambique ������������������������   95 Danilo Marcondes  Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations from the Prism of Civil Society������������������������������  113 Laura Trajber Waisbich  and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil In as a Security Provider in Africa����������������������������������������������������������������������  133 Pedro Seabra and Danilo Marcondes Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa ��������������������  151 Robertṣ I. Rotberg Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  163 xi

About the Author

Mathias  Alencastro  specializes in Brazilian foreign policy and Portuguese-­ Speaking Africa. He completed his Master’s (Sorbonne) and Doctorate (Oxford) in Governance of Natural Resources in Angola. He also served in the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic and is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP). His current research, funded by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (2017/13092-1), focuses on the role of private companies in Brazilian foreign policy. Barnaby Joseph Dye  is a Research Associate at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He works on FutureDAMS, a large interdisciplinary research project that analyses the resurgence of dams and aims to produce policy relevant measures to improve the record of these large infrastructure. He obtained his DPhil from the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. The thesis is titled: “The Politics of Dam Resurgence: High Modernist Statebuilding and the Emerging Powers in Africa.” Barnaby has published in leading African Study journals and on various edited blogs. Thiago Krause  is Professor at Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. He holds a PhD in History from the same University (2015). Thiago is the author of Em Busca da Honra: a remuneração dos serviços da guerra holandesa e os hábitos das ordens militares (Annablume, 2012) and A América Portuguesa e os sistemas atlânticos na época moderna: monarquia pluricontinental e Antigo Regime (FGV Editora, 2013). He has also published articles on the social and political history of colonial Brazil in various academic journals. Thiago is currently revising his dissertation on the relationship between elites, enslaved persons, royal officers and the Crown in colonial Bahia, the first Brazilian capital. Danilo  Marcondes  is Assistant Professor at the Brazilian War College (Escola Superior de Guerra-ESG) in Rio de Janeiro. Danilo holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge on Brazilian South-South Cooperation with Mozambique. He was also a Junior Visiting Fellow at the Graduate xiii

xiv

About the Author

Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-­ Rio). Danilo has published articles and book chapters on Brazilian foreign and defence policy, South-South Cooperation, Brazil-Africa relations and the South Atlantic space. Leonardo Marques  is Professor of History at Fluminense Federal University and a Researcher on the Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database project. He holds a PhD in History from Emory University (2013). Leonardo is the author of The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867 (Yale University Press, 2016) and Por aí e por muito longe: migrações, dívidas e os libertos de 1888 (Apicuri, 2009). He has also published articles on the history of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade in various academic journals, including the Journal of Latin American Studies, Journal of the Early Republic, and Tempo, among others. His current project explores the slave-trading networks responsible for the disembarkation of more than two million enslaved Africans in Rio de Janeiro over three centuries. Robertṣ  I.  Rotberg  is the Founding Director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation. He was President of Lafayette College and Academic Vice President of Tufts University, and Professor of Political Science at MIT. Robert is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was Fulbright Research Professor at the Paterson School (Carleton) and the Balsillie School (Waterloo), both international affairs graduate schools in Canada. He has published a number of books on failed states, governance, corruption, African politics, Burma, Haiti, and Sri Lanka, plus books on China in Africa and on preventing genocide. Adriana Schor  is Associate Professor of International Economics at the Institute of International Relations, University of São Paulo. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of São Paulo and was Visiting Researcher at the Centre for International Development at Harvard; Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford; and German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg. Her main research interests are related to trade, development and the interrelation between trade and development. Pedro Seabra  is a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Studies (CEI-­ Iscte), a Guest Assistant Professor at the University Institute of Lisbon (Iscte-IUL), and a Researcher at the National Defence Institute (IDN). He holds a PhD in Political Science, with specialization in International Relations, from the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa). He was previously a Nuclear Security Fellow in the School of International Relations at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a SUSI Fellow of the US State Department, and a Leibniz-DAAD Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). His main research interests focus on international security, South Atlantic geopolitics and security capacity building in Africa.

About the Author

xv

Laura Trajber Waisbich  is a Brazilian young Researcher with more than 7 years of research and policy experience in the field of Brazilian foreign policy and international development, particularly South-South Cooperation. In the past, she has worked on global human rights issues alongside international non-governmental organizations in Brazil, the USA and Europe. Currently, Laura is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Cambridge and a Researcher affiliated with two well-known Sao Paulo–based think tanks: the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) and the South-South Cooperation Research and Policy Centre (Articulação SUL).

List of Figures

Fig. 1 Spectrum of relational engagement between Brazil and Africa. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   37 Fig. 1  Brazilian trade with Sub-Saharan Africa. ����������������������������������������������   45 Fig. 2  Brazilian imports from Sub-Saharan Africa. �����������������������������������������   46 Fig. 3  Brazilian imports from Sub-Saharan Africa. �����������������������������������������   47 Fig. 4  Brazilian exports in 2015. ����������������������������������������������������������������������   47 Fig. 5  Brazilian exports to Sub-Saharan Africa. ����������������������������������������������   48 Fig. 6  Brazilian main trade partners in Sub-Saharan Africa. ���������������������������   49 Fig. 1 Modes of civil society engagement in SSC and Brazil-Africa relations. �������������������������������������������������������������������   120

xvii

List of Tables

Table 1 Development cooperation projects in Tanzania ������������������������������������   80

xix

Introduction: Turnaround and Let-Down – Making Sense of Brazil and Africa after the Surge Mathias Alencastro and Pedro Seabra

In late July 2018, 3 months before the general elections that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power, Brazilian President Michel Temer attended the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in his first and only trip to Africa. At the time, Temer reiterated that relations with African states were a diplomatic priority for Brazil and that such focus would remain unchallenged. Yet, he left without attending the closing remarks from his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa. Temer’s overall indifference to African affairs throughout his 2 years in office was only matched by that of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff (2010–2016). In a signal of changing priorities, Rousseff famously cut short her trip to Ethiopia for the 2013 African Union (AU) summit. Even though at that occasion she announced that Brazil would cancel US$900,000 owed by 11 African countries, her abrupt departure from Addis Ababa exasperated her African interlocutors, who had grown accustomed to greater levels of attentiveness under her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010). In a bid to build strategic partnerships with African counterparts, Lula’s government had indeed elevated the continent to one of the cornerstones of Brazilian diplomacy during his tenure. It is often argued that such development amounted to a ‘rebirth’of past trends, rather than a brand-new foreign policy orientation in itself (Saraiva 2010, 174), somehow downplaying the novelty of it all. Regardless, his presidency unmistakeably brought Africa to the forefront of priorities amidst a fast-­ changing international order. More distinctly, common historical-cultural links between the Brazilian society and populations in Africa assumed a heightened role in official discourse whilst fuelled by the evolution of the Workers Party (PT  – M. Alencastro (*) Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), São Paulo, Brazil P. Seabra Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_1

1

2

M. Alencastro and P. Seabra

Partido dos Trabalhadores) in the country’s political scene. Considerable emphasis was thus attributed to a notion of indebtedness between Brazil and Africa, as the former attempted to depart from past ‘culturalist’ interpretations of Brazil’s African roots and its own perception as a supposedly racial democracy role model. The focal point was therefore set in presenting Brazilian endeavours and investments as a way for the country to not only reconnect with its past but also to repay African populations for its contribution to Brazil’s own achievements. The results were visible on multiple levels. By improving political connections under a common South-South aegis, promoting further trade opportunities and expanding the disbursement of significant amounts of development cooperation, Brazil quickly secured a foothold of its own in Africa. The simultaneous growth on all three areas corroborated the perception of a cross-governmental effort by Brazilian authorities in a sustained fashion, seeking to effectively expand ties across the Atlantic. Hence, from 2003 onwards, the PT governments presented a discourse that dully highlighted the intensity of the new commitments amidst a rapidly changing international order. Such approach made use of multiple concrete entry points. For one, it involved committing to an ambitious program centred on loans and credits, as well as on an exponential growth in South-South cooperation. On the ground, Brazilian officials moved quickly to not only increase diplomatic representation in several African capitals but also to sign a myriad of cooperation agreements amidst regular high-­ level visits. In the hinterlands, a tripartite cooperation program known as ProSAVANA promised to export Brazil’s own ‘green revolution’ to northern Mozambique, whereas the Cotton-4 program pursued similar ambitions in West Africa. In world stages, a number of alliances with African votes led to a revamped profile of Brazil as a chief spokesperson of the South and contributed to the election of several Brazilian officials for high-level positions. Investment in multilateral venues soon turned considerably more strategic and proliferated in the direct proportion of how many African counterparts could be encompass by each new or old forum in existence. Even military branches, long detached from wider foreign forays, began to see in Africa an opportunity to expand their role in geopolitical calculations across the ocean and thus justify their own modernisation efforts. But initiatives were not restricted to official channels alone; the private sector took equal part in this outreach to Africa. Construction giant Odebrecht, who had already taken the lead in Angola’s post-war reconstruction, massively diversified its investments beyond infrastructure during the Lula years. Likewise, mining transnational Vale went head to head against Rio Tinto for the exploration of bauxite mines in Guinea and became one of the flagbearers for Brazilian investments in the continent. For the most enthusiasts, Brazil’s oil partnerships in the Gulf of Guinea would turn the South Atlantic into the next global oil hotspot. Some of these investments were generously underwritten by the National Development Bank (BNDES – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), which pursued a policy of strengthening ‘national champions’, i.e. companies considered to have the capacity and scale to enter new markets successfully.

Introduction: Turnaround and Let-Down – Making Sense of Brazil and Africa…

3

Organised civil society also helped build bridges between Brazil and African societies. Think tanks began producing Africa-centred research, and Brazilian NGOs partnered with counterparts around the African continent to carry out programs, explore policy ideas and even contest parts of the official cooperation agenda with African counterparts, as in the case of ProSAVANA. Brazilian-made cultural products, from telenovelas (soap operas) to cosmetics and music, experienced a surge in many African countries, especially – but not exclusively – lusophone ones. What a difference a decade can make. In the face of political meltdown and the proliferation of controversial judicial investigations, Brazilian state and private initiatives essentially collapsed. Today, diplomatic missions are running idle, and the crumbling infrastructure in Maputo and Accra is little more than a memory from a promising past. An airport built by Odebrecht with BNDES financing in Nacala, Mozambique, that had been inaugurated in 2014 remains closed and empty after the Mozambican government defaulted on the loan, amidst accusations of corruption by Odebrecht and overestimation of the prosperity that would emerge out of coal exports from the region. Back in Brazil, the Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigations exposed the extreme lengths to which national corporations went to in order to become structurally entwined with policy-making at home and abroad, as PT’s tenure wore on (Dye and Alencastro 2020). This, in turn, laid the ground for the beginning of a strikingly different political cycle, heralded by the election of Jair Bolsonaro on October 2018. One of the most visible policy consequences was the official reorientation of geographic priorities away from the South and increasingly so once more towards the North, particularly the USA. Overtures towards Africa were brought to a near standstill, and not even calls for economic exchanges to ‘live up to our relationships firmly anchored in history and a shared cultural heritage’ (Araújo 2019) succeeded in counteracting the profound disengagement that ensued. Despite Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo’s trip to Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Cape Verde and Senegal in 2019 as well as the announcement of a future presidential visit to Africa – possibly to Angola or Cape Verde – contradictory outcomes piled on. An unprecedented symbiosis with evangelical churches and similar movements, themselves a pillar of support for the Bolsonaro government, quickly took the lead in what remained of existing backchannels with Africa (Fellet 2019). And in keeping up with one of its early electoral promises, on May 2020, the government officially decreed the closing down of embassies in Freetown (Sierra Leone) and Monrovia (Liberia), thus signalling to the rest of the continent that the expansive cycle of diplomatic representation was indeed over and done. Overtime, the association between African states and corruption scandals became dominant amongst opinion makers. For the general public, the involvement of Angola in Mozambique in Lava Jato investigations marked the end of an era of grand designs in foreign policy. But for all its failures and let-downs, Brazil’s drive to Africa still left a durable mark, whose implications are yet to be understood. Not all projects have gone under, and some cooperation agreements and initiatives have even managed to retain momentum, with a few instruments being proposed anew. Regardless, the overall narrative of a ‘bust’ after the ‘boom’ in Brazil-Africa relations stands out as difficult

4

M. Alencastro and P. Seabra

to avoid (Abdenur 2018). Despite the many reasons for Brazil’s commitment to Africa – from the historical legacy of the slave trade to the geographical border of the South Atlantic and the earlier diplomatic efforts that date back to the 1970s – those elements alone cannot account for the steepest drop in transatlantic ties since the early 2000s. What were the main successes and failures of Brazil’s overall strategy towards Africa? And what does the dramatic change of events, with Brazil moving from a pivotal player to an almost invisible one in merely half a decade, tell us about this particular token of South-South cooperation? To answer these questions, we need to address the other side of the story and adopt a more critical perspective on Brazil’s previously lauded ties to Africa. The tribulations of Brazilian projects in Africa and the drawbacks of the government’s realpolitik, easily ignored in times of affluence, reveal much about how foreign policy is devised in Brazil, including the deep influence of private companies and the limits of state bureaucracy and inter-ministerial coordination, as well as the government’s tense relationship with civil society. The spectacle of political investigations and imprisonments over Brazil’s alleged corrupt dealings in Africa as part of the Car Wash anti-corruption drive should not refrain scholars from examining the changes in perception of Brazil’s presence and influence in Africa. As criticism of Brazil’s role in Africa grows amongst political circles in Brazil – some of it deserved, and some of it an attempt to reinforce African stereotypes as the ‘dark continent’ – an empirically based and updated analysis of Brazil’s involvement in Africa is urgently needed. Moreover, even though relations between Brazil and Africa have weakened in general, Brazilians and Africans in all walks of life, from artists to entrepreneurs and some committed diplomats and researchers, continue to make some of those ties grow in both depth and complexity. Developing and providing an informed understanding of the Brazilian engagement with Africa will pave the way for a more measured response to the current decline as Brazil endures a complex political transition of its own back home.

1  Book Outline The rise and fall of Brazil-Africa relations has provoked much discussion in policy-­ making as well as in scholarly research, primarily in Africa, Europe and Brazil. These debates have focused on broad interrelated topics, namely, Brazil-Africa as presidential diplomacy, Brazil-Africa as big business and Brazil-Africa as a South-­ South partnership. The first thread holds that Brazil’s involvement in Africa was unique because it depended on the rise of Lula’s government on the global stage and on the figure of the president himself (e.g. Saraiva 2010, 2012; Stolte 2015). Presidential diplomacy thus became a quintessential tool to promote new ties across the continent inasmuch as the ability to draw connections between the rise of Brazil as a global power and the new era of peace and development in countries like Angola and Mozambique helped pave the way for new opportunities during this specific period. The point

Introduction: Turnaround and Let-Down – Making Sense of Brazil and Africa…

5

being that the individual mattered and made a difference, thus explaining the stark contrast with previous administrations as well as with previous short-lived bursts of Brazilian engagement with Africa. The second thread holds that Brazil’s engagement in Africa was essentially driven by business interests. It emphasises the role of commodities and little concern for environment and human rights (e.g. White 2010, 2013; Garcia and Kato 2015). In this context, Brazil was unabashedly aggregated with fellow BRICS members who pursued similar expansive strategies towards Africa, heavily supported by extractive industries but also often subjected to criticisms over the methods adopted and over how it further contributed to maintain African countries locked in previous dependent roles amidst global supply chains. The third thread holds that Brazil’s involvement in Africa was part of a long-term diplomatic commitment to the continent, one that is driven by its aim of balancing Western influence by forging cooperation and partnerships with African governments in the name of South-South solidarity (e.g. Barbosa et al. 2009; Seabra and Sanches 2019; Seibert and Visentini 2019). Coalitions formed with the purpose of reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), congregating votes at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) or advancing innovative trade frameworks that were brought forward as a way to not only ensure Africa’s support for Brazilian initiatives but also to guarantee that their interests would be accounted for, thus breaking the restrictions of most post-World War II institutions. We acknowledge the three overall trends in previous research lines, but we also seek to go beyond them and provide a more critical exegesis of these years. This book will therefore investigate the rise and fall of the relationship between Brazil and Africa in order to assess the character and content of Brazil’s foreign policy towards the continent. We heed the call for more structured work in English over Brazil’s multifaceted external relations (Burges 2017, 4–7), successful or declining as they might be, whilst seeking to complement recent efforts that already provide general snapshots of such period (e.g. Lessa et al. 2020; Casarões 2020). In order to demonstrate how the three dimensions – presidential, big business and South-South cooperation – shaped Brazil’s approach to the continent, the book will shed light on the role of resources as a driver, the importance of personal leadership and the influence of the Brazilian diplomatic history and traditions in shaping Brazil’s priorities in Africa. Moreover, the book will provide attention to the mechanisms of implementation, from Brazilian private corporations to the diplomatic and aid agencies, military branches, and the prospects of Brazilian activism overseas.

2  Chapter Outline In chapter “The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)”, Thiago Krause and Leonardo Marques look at how present bilateral relations are shaped by their long and painful shared history, and most particularly the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted for three centuries and led to the coerced migration of 5.5 m ­ illion

6

M. Alencastro and P. Seabra

enslaved Africans to Brazil. Relations collapsed with the suppression of the slave trade and the expansion of European colonialism in the African continent. They resumed a century later, as Brazilian officials turned to Africa in an attempt to gain relevance in the world stage. However, and crucially, their perception of Africa remained profoundly shaped by the historical events that preceded them. Pedro Seabra then lays out in chapter “From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa” the dynamics of Brazil in Africa in relation to Portugal, with the purpose of reframing the former’s agenda towards African lusophone countries. The aftermath of the 2012 military coup in Guinea-Bissau and the adhesion of Equatorial-Guinea to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) allow to question the fragility and susceptibility of Brazil’s net gains in Africa in light of changing political-economic cycles. The chapter inquires whether Brazil’s headways in Africa over recent years were organic in nature and in content or if, in fact, were achieved at the expenses of other previously established actors. In chapter “Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)”, Adriana Schor looks at key characteristics of economic trade. She shows the exponential increase in bilateral trade, a point consistently raised by official from both sides of the Atlantic, did not fundamentally changed patterns of trade. Trade remained highly dependent on commodities and concentrated in very few countries. In other words, there is no Africa specificity when it comes to trade. Mathias Alencastro then explores the case of Angola in more detail in chapter “Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola”. He argues that, whilst Lula believed in the benefits of strengthening the ties of Brazil to Africa and he went out of his way to protect the interest of Odebrecht in Angola, he did not fully control the agenda. Indeed, by the time he came to power, the Brazilian company had already developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Angolan government. In fact, Odebrecht enlisted the president to help with its attempt to remain competitive in Angola. In the meantime, the Angolan government saw in the Brazilian politician, a global celebrity in the late 2000s, a skilful advocate of the democratic credentials of the regime. In the end, Lula conferred a new dimension to an already existing alliance. In chapter “Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?”, Barnaby Dye reinforces this assessment by arguing that Brazilian companies did not appear to fully appreciate the nature of the African state and its deal environment. Focusing on the case study of Tanzania, it details the investment of two construction companies, Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão, engaged in dam and airport projects. He shows that, whilst the Brazilian state had a clearly enabling role, the private sector, and the Tanzanian government, effectively called the shots. Chapters “Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical Production in Mozambique” and “Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations from the Prism of Civil Society” consider the politics of development cooperation. In the former, Danilo Marcondes examines Brazil’s initiative to donate a pharmaceutical factory to Mozambique. The factory is one in many projects that Brazil is developing in the health sector as part

Introduction: Turnaround and Let-Down – Making Sense of Brazil and Africa…

7

of its South-South development cooperation portfolio. Nonetheless, it has been singled out due to its highly symbolic nature, its direct association with technology transfer, broad political impact and innovative character. For her part, Laura Waisbich explores the centrality of civil society activism around Brazilian foreign policy towards Africa. She argues this social engagement responded to increasing opportunities for Brazilian civil society actors to engage at home and abroad, thus enabling different groups to pursue different forms of engagement with the official Africa policy. As a consequence, state-society relations and interfaces forged under PT’s rule allowed for blurred and hybrid form participation. Finally, in chapter “In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa”, Pedro Seabra and Danilo Marcondes address a still underexplored issue with regard to Africa  – the military. Marked by quick gains and an equally quick recognition over a short period of time, defence cooperation with African countries has not been exempted from a visible disengagement on the ground. They explore the main travails in this domain, which have compromised much of the gains previously obtained throughout the continent, with a specific focus on the inroads carried out at the defence industry level. They also present some opportunities for a new pick-up of Brazilian interest in the middle and long run. In the Conclusion, Robert Rotberg reviews the future of Brazil and Africa relations. He argues that Brazil’s main challenge in the post-Lula years is to project itself confidently into Africa. The project devised in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, characterised by the lack of institutionalisation, does not provide the basis for a long-term, sustainable partnership. However, Brazil and Africa are bound to meet again. It is in Africa where Brazil sees itself best in the role of a global middle power. For African leaders, Brazil will always be seen as a historically and culturally deeply connected interlocutor.

References Abdenur, Adriana Erthal. 2018. Brazil-Africa relations: From boom to bust. In Africa and the world: Bilateral and multilateral international diplomacy, ed. Dawn Nagar and Charles Mutasa, 189–208. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Araújo, Ernesto. Discurso do ministro Ernesto Araújo na conferência “A Cooperação entre o Brasil e a África”, por ocasião da celebração do Dia da África  – Brasília, 27 de maio de 2019. http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/discursos-artigos-e-entrevistas-categoria/ ministro-das-relacoes-exteriores-discursos/20456-discurso-do-ministro-ernesto-araujona-conferencia-a-cooperacao-entre-o-brasil-e-a-africa-por-ocasiao-da-celebracao-do-dia-daafrica-brasilia-27-de-maio-de-2019. Accessed 25 January 2020. Barbosa, Alexandre de Freitas, Thais Narciso, and Marina Biancalana. 2009. Brazil in Africa: Another emerging power in the continent? Politikon 36 (1): 59–86. Burges, Sean. 2017. Brazil in the world: The international relations of a South American giant. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Casarões, Guilherme. 2020. Leaving the Club without slamming the door: Brazil’s return to middle-­ power status. In Status and the rise of Brazil: Global ambitions, humanitarian ­engagement

8

M. Alencastro and P. Seabra

and international challenges, ed. Paulo Esteves, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, and Benjamin de Carvalho, 89–110. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Dye, Barnaby Joseph, and Mathias Alencastro. 2020. Debunking Brazilian exceptionalism in its Africa relations: Evidence from Angola and Tanzania. Global Society. https://doi.org/10.1080 /13600826.2020.1722617. Fellet, João. 2019. Evangélicos fazem ofensiva para dominar política externa do Brasil para África. BBC Brasil, December 23. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-50845597. Accessed 25 January 2020. Garcia, Ana, and Karina Kato. 2015. The story of hunter and the hunted? Brazil’s role in Angola and Mozambique. In BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique, ed. Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, 117–134. London: Pluto Press. Lessa, Antônio Carlos, Danielly Silva Ramos Becard, and Thiago Gehre Galvão. 2020. Rise and fall of triumphalism in Brazilian foreign policy: The international strategy of the workers Party’s governments (2003–2016). In Status and the rise of Brazil: Global ambitions, humanitarian engagement and international challenges, ed. Paulo Esteves, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, and Benjamin de Carvalho, 71–88. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Saraiva, José Flávio Sombra. 2010. The new Africa and Brazil in the Lula era: The rebirth of Brazilian Atlantic policy. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (Special Issue): 169–182. ———. 2012. África parceira do Brasil atlântico: Relações internacionais do Brasil e da África no início do século XXI. Editora Fino Traço: Belo Horizonte. Seabra, Pedro, and Edalina Rodrigues Sanches. 2019. South-south cohesiveness versus south-­ south rhetoric: Brazil and Africa at the UN general assembly. International Politics 56 (5): 585–604. Seibert, Gerhard, and Paulo Visentini, eds. 2019. Brazil-Africa relations: Historical dimensions and contemporary engagements, from the 1960s to the present. Suffolk: James Currey. Stolte, Christina. 2015. Brazil’s Africa strategy: Role conception and the drive for international status. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. White, Lyal. 2010. Understanding Brazil’s new drive for Africa. South African Journal of International Affairs 17 (2): 221–242. ———. 2013. Emerging powers in Africa: Is Brazil any different? South African Journal of International Affairs 20 (1): 117–136.

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960) Leonardo Marques and Thiago Krause

1  Introduction Brazil established the longest relationship between a region of the Americas and the African continent. At the centre of this connection was the transatlantic slave trade, which led to the forced migration of approximately 5.5 million enslaved Africans (44% of the 12.5 million who went through the Middle Passage) between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Brazil was linked to areas both within and without the Portuguese Empire, but the strongest connection was to Angola. From the mid-­ seventeenth century onwards, Brazilian-based merchants scooped a growing slice of the slave trade from their metropolitan counterparts, and the African coast became a privileged space for illegal commerce with Dutch and English traders. The importation of enslaved Africans was so important for Brazilian elites that, after independence, they resisted British abolitionist pressure for decades. After the suppression of the traffic in 1850, Brazilian intellectual and political elites sought to forget the continent that had forcibly supplied most of the migrants responsible for settling Brazil, but multiple connections were actively sustained by Afro-Brazilians on both shores of the Atlantic in the following decades for cultural and economic reasons. Nevertheless, these direct links gradually waned after the dawn of the twentieth century, though imagined connections were revived from the 1930s onwards, both from above and from below. Therefore, this chapter offers an overview of Brazil-­ Africa relations from their beginnings to 1960, when the Independent Foreign Policy of Jânio Quadros and African decolonization brought significant change to the connections between Brazil and Africa.

L. Marques Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil T. Krause (*) Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_2

9

10

L. Marques and T. Krause

2  T  he Portuguese Slave-Trading Monopoly in the Long Sixteenth Century (c. 1450–1640) The connections between Brazil and Africa were born as part of Portuguese overseas expansion. Portuguese advance into North Africa in the early fifteenth century had slavery as a central part of its strategy from the very beginning: most of the surviving population of the conquered city of Ceuta were enslaved and carried to the Iberian Peninsula to be sold, and thousands more Muslims would suffer the same fate in the following decades. The doctrine of “just war” legitimated their captivity, as they had supposedly been defeated in a moral conflict and therefore could have been killed but instead were spared by their conquerors (Mendes 2018). When Portuguese ships reached West Africa in the 1440s, Portuguese society was already accustomed to receiving a large number of enslaved labourers, while the recently occupied islands in the Atlantic – first Madeira and later São Tomé – needed a workforce to cultivate the coveted “white gold” that fetched high prices in Europe: sugar. A complex economic system emerged in which the Portuguese purchased manufactured products in North Africa and exchanged them in West Africa for slaves, who were then shipped to the Atlantic islands and the Iberian Peninsula. Antonio de Almeida Mendes (2008) estimates that this early North Atlantic trade enslaved up to 400,000 West Africans from the 1440s to 1640 and that, in the late sixteenth century, 10–15% of the population of Lisbon – one of the largest European cities at the time, home to more than 100,000 people – was of African descent, most of them enslaved. The Atlantic foundations of the “trade in the living” (de Alencastro 2018) were built through the demand for enslaved persons in the Iberian Peninsula, while the settlement of the Atlantic islands showed how enslaved labourers could be profitably put to work in the tropics, establishing a precedent that would be replicated in a much grander scale on the other side of the Atlantic. The slave trade became truly transatlantic during the sixteenth century, with Spanish America slowly becoming the main market for enslaved Africans. Large deposits of precious metals and the dramatic decline of the indigenous population ensured that demand for slaves would remain high. From 1511 to 1610, approximately 290,000 enslaved persons were carried from Africa to Spanish America, with thousands more transhipped from Seville, four times greater than the 75,000 Africans forcibly carried to Brazil in the same period. Therefore, it was Spanish American demand that pushed the initial development of the transatlantic slave trade and established the foundations of the system. The Portuguese controlled most European commerce with Africa, but this shows that the transatlantic slave trade was an international affair from its very beginning and that relations between Brazil and Africa are better understood within a wider framework (Mendes 2008; de Alencastro 2018). Caravans had connected the sub-Saharan region to North Africa and the Muslim world for almost a millennium before the arrival of the Portuguese. The trade in enslaved human beings was usually an important part of this commercial system. The Portuguese inserted themselves in these networks in Senegambia, but slaving

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

11

was only one aspect – albeit an essential one – of broader cross-cultural exchanges (Green 2012). The large majority of Upper Guineans, however, went to Spanish America (Wheat 2016). Three simultaneous developments in the last third of the sixteenth century first connected Brazil and Africa: the rise of sugar production, favoured by natural endowments and European demand; the decline of the indigenous population in sugar-producing areas as a result of exploitation and disease; and the Portuguese conquest of Angola. With expertise accumulated in the trade with the North Atlantic and Spanish America, Portuguese slavers could easily supply the Brazilian market, which finally surpassed Spanish America in the 1610s. Nearly all of the 340,000 enslaved Africans transported to Brazil before 1640 came from the Kongo-Angola region in West-Central Africa (and in much larger numbers than their European counterparts until 1850). Diplomatic relations of the Kongolese monarchy with Portugal and the Papacy, its conversion to Catholicism in the early sixteenth century and the adoption of a creolized form of Christianity ensured that the people from this region would have a greater contact with European culture than any other region of sub-Saharan Africa. The alliance with Kongo was essential to the Portuguese conquest of the Ndongo kingdom (or at least part of it), as was Ndongo’s factionalism, since many sobas (local chieftains) allied with the Europeans and adopted Christianity in this process. The wars were not always successful, but they generated thousands of captives. Commerce and warfare were almost inextricably enmeshed in Portuguese slaving. The Portuguese also established a number of presidios (administrative-military outposts) in the Angolan interior, which was a key part of the Iberian slave-trading system. Despite the obstacles to this interiorization of Portuguese rule, no other European power managed to create anything remotely similar until the nineteenth century (Thornton and Heywood 2007; Eltis 2019). Therefore, many of the enslaved Africans that first arrived on Brazilian shores had had previous contact with European culture, had experienced violent warfare and were very familiar with the concept of monarchy. All these characteristics informed African actions in the New World, as can be seen in the case of Palmares, a neo-African kingdom in the Brazilian Northeast that thrived during the seventeenth century (Thornton 2008; Lara 2016). Nevertheless, Portuguese overseas expansion was not only a commercial endeavour but also a political and religious one. These three aspects of expansion were inextricably intertwined. A small and sparsely populated kingdom, Portugal practiced what Luiz Felipe de Alencastro (1998) defined as pre-emptive expansionism to reinforce its position against its much larger and mightier Castilian neighbour, a strategy that would remain relevant (though less effective) after the rise of the Protestant powers of the United Provinces and England in the seventeenth century. Portugal managed to keep the near monopoly of the trade with West Africa for almost two centuries, largely as a consequence of the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479–1480), in which the united crowns of Castile and Aragon accepted Portuguese claims of sovereignty over Africa in exchange for the Canary Islands and the end of war in the Iberian Peninsula. Alliances established by Portugal with Berber tribes, Muslim rulers and West African elites were also essential to building trading networks and strengthening its position in negotiations with other European powers.

12

L. Marques and T. Krause

Papal bulls were an indispensable tool to affirm the legitimacy of Portuguese sovereignty over Africa, above all against Castilian interlopers, since the principle of discovery (invention) could be easily contested. The bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) were granted to King Afonso V (1448–1481) as a crucial part of this effort. They continued the tradition of understanding overseas expansion as a crusading enterprise, justified as Portuguese dominium over all pagan lands yet to be discovered, whose inhabitants could be rightfully enslaved. Such practice was justified because the “infidels” should be converted and/or were violating (though in a largely undefined manner) natural law and therefore could be taken as prisoners of war (Marcocci 2012, 35–143). At the same time, they rapidly incorporated Muslim perceptions associating sub-Saharan Africans to slavery (Sweet 1997). Such catholic claims and treaties had little effect on the Protestant English and Dutch rivals, who were active in Atlantic Africa since the mid-sixteenth century. Their interest laid mainly in gold, pepper and ivory, among other exotic goods, since they did not have a market for enslaved people either in Europe or in the Americas. That changed after the crisis of the Iberian empires and the rise of Northern Europe in the mid-seventeenth century, which also disrupted the Portuguese monopoly over the African slave trade.

3  A  tlantic Systems in the Long Eighteenth Century (c. 1640–1807) Dutch expansion in the context of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) played a key role in the definitive disruption of Iberian claims of authority over the world. Dutch actions focused on Portuguese colonies and outposts, the weakest part of Iberian overseas dominions. In Africa, they attacked two key Portuguese outposts: the São Jorge da Mina Castle (then renamed Elmina) in West Africa and Luanda in Angola. The Portuguese regained Angola by the late 1640s, after a successful expedition organized and led by the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador de Sá, but lost much of their influence in West Africa (de Alencastro 2018). The Dutch in turn formally replaced the Portuguese as the main power here but were unable to stop the entrance of other Northern European powers into the region (Postma and Schwartz 2003). After nearly disappearing in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Portuguese trade in West Africa was re-established in the following decades as a result of the growing interest of Africans and Europeans over Brazilian products, namely, tobacco and gold. The peculiarities of Brazilian tobacco (which had a growing consumer base on the Slave Coast) and the great European and African demand for Brazilian gold led to various trans-imperial slave-trading relations in the region. By the 1720s the Portuguese had built the São João Baptista de Ajudá fort in Ouidah, with the further expansion of the slave trade in the region. In the following decades, tensions led to the partial destruction of the outpost, but the traffic nonetheless remained strong. By the early 1750s, the Dahomey Kingdom sent the first

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

13

diplomatic mission to Bahia to ensure that connections between the two regions would continue unabated (Macedo 2018). Along with West-Central Africa, West Africa (especially the Slave Coast) thus became the main source of captives to Brazil over the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century was marked by the existence of two different slave-­ trading systems. The efficiency of the system created by the Portuguese, with the key participation of a group of Luso-African merchants (called pumbeiros, lançados or tangomaos, depending on the location), large barracoons on the coast and a few administrative-military outposts in the interior, was most evident in Angola (Rodrigues 2005; Eltis 2019). Dutch, British and French slave-trading activities were conducted mostly from ships, which made transactions slower and costlier, since the total period on the coast (before a significant number of slaves had been embarked) was much longer than in the Portuguese case. It also made the trade more dangerous. In almost 500 voyages in the eighteenth century, there was some form of African resistance (slave insurrection onboard, ship attacked from the shore, etc.). Available data shows 227 cases of African resistance on British ships (46% of the total) and 160 among the French (32%). At the other end were the Portuguese, who only had five cases of slave resistance (1% of the total). Apparently, African resistance was more common even in Danish slave ships, which had six cases over the eighteenth century.1 This attests to the great efficiency of the slave-trading system built by the Portuguese in the long sixteenth century, which, combined with their shorter voyages across the Atlantic, ensured that Brazil would be the greatest slave colony of the Americas. In West Africa, Portuguese slave-trading activities were more similar to their Northern European counterparts, but the great interest of African authorities over Brazilian tobacco and, especially, gold ensured that the Portuguese would get quick access to the best slaves (which came to be known on the Slave Coast as “gold slaves” or “Portuguese slaves”). In sum, the Portuguese not only created efficient slave-trading structures in Africa but also were also favoured by the great demand for specific goods such as tobacco and gold. From an Atlantic perspective, the Portuguese created the largest and longest slave-trading branch in history (Berbel et al. 2016; Eltis 2019). On the other side of the Atlantic, the African demand for products such as tobacco, cachaça and gold led to the rise of Brazil-based slave traders, who established an extremely dynamic and long-lasting South Atlantic commercial system. Unlike any other part of the Americas, the great majority of ships that carried enslaved Africans to Brazil left Brazilian instead of European ports. Colonial North America also had an American-based slave-trading community, but it never reached the level of importance of its Brazilian counterpart. Portugal obviously continued to participate in different ways in the slave trade, but the strong connection between Brazil-based slave traders and different parts of Africa, especially Angola and Benin, led to the creation of extremely strong networks connecting both sides of the Atlantic.

 See https://slavevoyages.org/voyages/CCKTkzpN (on the Tables interface, organize the data by flag and number of voyages). 1

14

L. Marques and T. Krause

Africans in Brazil also maintained their own connections to Africa, reinventing traditions and establishing nations of people from similar areas of provenance to affirm and create particular identities. In a context of intense disembeddedness – enslaved Africans could be sold and separated from others at any moment – these efforts to connect and adapt became central for their survival. The individualization produced by Atlantic capitalist slavery was countered by the efforts to create identities of a social nature. Connections between Africa and Brazil thus lay, in Joseph Miller’s words, “in the continuity of overcoming the dispersal and isolation of slaving and enslavement, not in resurrecting an orderly background in Africa to bring order to lives in America over which the slaves had no inherent control” (Miller 2004, 93). Identities and connections between both sides of the Atlantic changed according to time and space, depending on different configurations in colonial Brazil. In the formative years of the sixteenth century, Africans came mostly from Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa and were a minority among a majority of indigenous workers. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, survival strategies brought slaves closer to the culture of their masters, with the use and manipulation of catholic symbols. Catholicism remained important for many slaves throughout the colonial period, but the intensification of the slave trade and the expansion of slave frontiers in Africa during the long eighteenth century as a result of the rise of Brazilian gold mining complicated things, with the emergence of new slave identities in Brazil such as Minas, Angolas, and Benguelas. According to Miller, these had less to do with specific ethnicities in Africa than with survival strategies in the new setting, even though historians continued to debate the exact nature of these connections (Miller 2004; Midlo Hall 2005; Sidbury and Cañizares-­ Esguerra 2011). Besides West Africa and West-Central Africa, a third area in Africa became an important source of slaves for Portuguese America by the last quarter of the eighteenth century: Upper Guinea (mostly Senegambia). In his effort to develop peripheral parts of the colony and stimulate those that had been experiencing an economic crisis, the Marquis of Pombal created two famous monopolistic companies: the General Trading Company of Grão-Pará and Maranhão (CGCGPM – Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão) and the General Trading Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba (CGCP – Companhia Geral de Comércio de Pernambuco e da Paraíba). In the case of Maranhão, most slaves came from the Senegambia region. This was largely explained by environmental factors since the North Atlantic gyre made the connection between Upper Guinea and Northern Brazil easier than other parts. This trade also had the more familiar triangular pattern that marked the traffic to the Caribbean and North America (Domingues 2008; Martins 2019).

4  I ndependent Brazil and the Making of the Contraband Slave Trade (1808–1850) By the early nineteenth century, a fourth region became a key supplier of slaves to Brazil: Mozambique. This was the result of a new factor in international politics, namely, the rise of abolitionism and its transformation into British imperial policy.

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

15

Having abolished the slave trade to its own dominions in 1807, the British government started an international campaign to abolish the traffic in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. This effort led to a number of bilateral treaties against the slave trade with other nations in the 1810s, including Portugal and Spain, whose colonies were becoming the main destination of enslaved Africans. Brazilian independence in 1822 further complicated things. Brazilian elites had to find a balance between keeping the slave trade alive and getting British recognition of Brazilian independence, which would only come accompanied by Brazilian efforts to extinguish the traffic. A bilateral treaty against the traffic was passed in 1826 (with prohibition starting in 1830) followed by a federal law in 1831. In the following two decades, however, more than 700,000 enslaved Africans were illegally disembarked in Brazil. Most of them continued to come from West Africa and West-Central Africa, but growing abolitionist pressure, expanding demand and high profits led many merchants to develop slave-trading activities in far-flung Mozambique. Abolitionist pressure also led to transformations in the organization of the slave trade. While the system created by Northern Europeans was suppressed, the Iberian system became highly internationalized, leading to something of a symbiosis between the two systems. British credit and European-manufactured products became central to the traffic carried mainly by the Portuguese, while US-built ships – notoriously faster than their British counterparts – became a mainstay of the contraband slave trade. Ironically, the slave trade also became less global, since the Industrial Revolution led to the growing replacement of Asian goods (especially Indian textiles) for European ones. In geopolitical terms, the slave trade expanded within the fissures and tensions of the international order that was created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars under British hegemony. The general perception of trade as a positive force led many merchants to operate in the shady area that separated the legal trade from the slave trade. Should someone be charged for selling ships or providing credit that was ultimately used in the slave trade? These tensions were further complicated by the fact that the United States refused to establish a bilateral treaty with Britain that included the establishment of mixed commissions and the mutual right of search between the two navies (mainly because US authorities of all political stripes suspected of British imperialist ambitions). Therefore, US ships became valued not only because of their speed but also because of the protection offered against the Royal Navy by the US flag. Portuguese slave traders explored those tensions throughout the illegal era (Eltis 1987; Marques 2016). Many enslaved Africans that were illegally carried to Brazil after 1831 were taken to the coffee plantations of the Paraíba Valley and their associated sectors (Marquese and Tomich 2020). It was also from the Paraíba Valley that came some of the key politicians of the Conservative Party, which played a crucial role in the maintenance of the illegal slave trade during those two decades. Figures such as Deputy João Manuel Pereira da Silva attacked Great Britain in the Brazilian public sphere while acting closely with great slave traders such as Manuel Pinto da Fonseca. In a few cases involving the British Navy, Pereira da Silva acted as Fonseca’s lawyer while writing angry pieces in local newspapers and giving pro-­ slave trade speeches in the Chamber of Deputies (Marques 2016, 150–155). The construction of the Brazilian state largely depended on the expansion of the coffee

16

L. Marques and T. Krause

sector (most of which was exported to the United States), which in turn depended on the supply of enslaved labourers from the outside. Brazilian elites and slave traders depended on each other to exist. Fonseca himself helped establish the Brazilian Empire by directly financing troops and furnishing ships to suppress revolts such as the Ragamuffin War (Parron et al. 2014; Mesquita 2019). Despite the strong ties produced by the contraband slave trade, relations between Brazil and Africa were shaken by independence in 1822. At the time, the idea that Angola should became part of independent Brazil was shared by a number of deputies on both sides of the Atlantic, and there was even talk of rebellion in Benguela (Ferreira 2012, 203–241). The third article of the 1825 treaty between Portugal and Brazil, recognizing Brazilian independence, however, ensured that Portuguese possessions would not be incorporated by the new nation. Commercial relations nonetheless remained strong, connecting not only West-Central and East Africa to Southeast Brazil but also West Africa, which continued to send large number of slaves to Brazil, especially to Bahia. Ties between Salvador and Benin were particularly strong, with a number of individuals (including former slaves) migrating from Bahia to Africa and engaging in slave-trading activities (of whom the most famous was certainly Francisco Felix de Souza, the “Chachá” of Ouidah). All these connections came to an end with the final abolition of the slave trade in 1850. Slave-trading networks reorganized themselves and transformed New York into one of their key bases of operation, supplying captives to Cuba while waiting for a possible reopening of the traffic to Brazil. Such a reopening never came, and Brazil-Africa relations would enter its weakest phase. Other merchants tried to export African primary products to Europe. Both groups rapidly lost ground in the face of British commercial and imperial expansion because their connections to Brazil were no longer an asset. The end of the slave trade should also be understood in the light of heightened enslaved resistance in the 1830s and 1840s, largely based on African identities, such as the Malês revolt of 1835. In the context of growing British pressure, which culminated with military attacks on the Brazilian shore, the fear of rebellion, racism and white fears contributed to the federal effort to suppress the slave trade. Elite concern about how to build up Brazilian national identity while hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans poured in the country also played a part.

5  Disengagement, Persistence and Imagination (1851–1960) While the last slave ships were arriving in Brazilian shores in the early 1850s, the famous Brazilian historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, a faithful servant of the Emperor, published his História Geral do Brazil. The book was marked by a systematic belittlement of Africa’s relevance in Brazilian history (an aspect that was further heightened in later editions) and by high expectations that the Brazilian population would be whitened through miscegenation. His perspective set the tone for most Brazilian intellectuals who, as part of the white elite, focused on

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

17

themselves instead of subaltern groups. They studiously ignored Africans and Afro-­ Brazilians during the second half of the century, both in their writings and in politics, despite (or because of) the fact that the latter were the majority of the population (almost 60% in the 1872 census). Native Americans could in turn be lionized in Romantic novels and poems because they were not seen as a threat and were thought to be on their way to extinction (Mattos 2014). Africa vanished so quickly from national consciousness because the economic networks that had linked the continent to Brazil were completely dismantled after the suppression of the slave trade in 1850. As de Alencastro (2019, 15, 19–20) has pointed out, the speed and regularity of steamboats and new trade routes through the Suez (1869) and Panama (1914) canals affirmed the supremacy of the North Atlantic over the South Atlantic. Such a dramatic change was not passively accepted by the Brazilian Empire. The Brazilian diplomatic representative in Angola from 1857 to 1861, Saturnino de Sousa e Oliveira, was responsible for studying ways to reconnect Brazil to Angola based on the exchange of Brazilian agricultural products such as cachaça (spirits), tobacco and sugar for Angolan goods such as wax. This trade would hopefully yield immediate gains and frustrate Portuguese plans to develop Angola into a new Brazil, which already in the 1840s had stimulated the cultivation of crops that competed with Brazilian ones, such as coffee, sugar and cotton. Sousa e Oliveira proposed the creation of a steamship company that would connect Luanda to Salvador, Recife and Rio de Janeiro in the manner of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company that linked Rio to Europe. Despite the efforts to enlist the governor of Angola to the cause, the Portuguese were not interested in reviving the Brazil-­ Angola connection, since the end of those connections stimulated Angolan demand for Portuguese exports and shipping. Sousa e Oliveira also strongly suggested to his superiors that Brazil needed to sign a commercial treaty with Portugal to achieve the same favourable conditions obtained by France, Great Britain and the United States in their dealings with Portugal and its colonies. This was not a priority, however, to a new generation of Brazilian statesmen who were more worried with conflicts in the Southern Cone and relations with Europe than with Angola, which was already seen as a thing of the past that was best left forgotten (Guizelin 2016, 211–244; Alexandre 2004, 112–118; Ferreira 2014). Portuguese colonial officials also suspected of Sousa e Oliveira because he supposedly helped a claimant to the Kongolese throne, Prince Nicolas, who was seen as hostile to Portuguese interests since he had previously requested a pension to finish his studies in Brazil and floated the possibility of increasing direct trade between Brazil and Kongo (Ferreira 2018). All of Sousa e Oliveira’s efforts failed: Prince Nicolas, for instance, was decapitated and impaled in 1859 when trying to flee. In the following decades, the death of the LusoBrazilians who had stayed in Angola after 1850 meant that all hopes of re-­ establishing regular commercial connections were forgotten. On the other hand, commerce with West Africa lasted until the 1880s because of the African demand for Bahian tobacco and rum (cachaça), which meant that Salvador remained intricately connected to Africa for much longer than Recife or Rio de Janeiro. Until the late 1880s, Brazil (meaning Salvador) was the third largest exporter to Lagos, only then losing the rum market to Germany and the tobacco and textile markets to Great Britain.

18

L. Marques and T. Krause

The strength of these connections in the second half of the nineteenth century was largely a result of the movement of thousands of African and (in a lesser scale) Afro-Brazilian returnees who had chosen to establish themselves in West Africa. This movement started in the immediate aftermath of the large 1835 revolt in Salvador, when authorities deported 200 Africans and enacted harsh restrictions that severely affected the lives of freed people. In just 2 years, almost a thousand Africans from Salvador (perhaps up to a fifth of the town’s freed population) obtained passports to cross the Atlantic; over 200 other individuals left from Rio de Janeiro. Since nearly all of them were originally from West Africa, most of these returnees established themselves in the coastal towns of Dahomey and were absorbed by the already considerable lusophone population known as Agudás. After the end of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil in 1850, the flow of returnees increased again, with thousands more coming from all parts of Brazil. This time, most of them established themselves in Lagos instead of Dahomey (Castillo 2016; Lima 2013). These communities became known as “Brazilians” (even those who had never been to the New World) in cities such as Accra and Lagos and affirmed their own identity for generations to come through the performance of Catholicism, ritual practices and architectural styles. They celebrated events such as the birthday of the Brazilian Emperor, as the Brazilian Dramatic Company did in 1880, and the abolition of slavery, which merited a six-day festival in Lagos (Verger 1976; Lindsay 1994; Amos and Ayesu 2002). Following requests from these returnees, there were attempts to connect Salvador and Lagos with steamships in 1883 and 1890 and a telegraphic connection in 1886, but these efforts were not enough to prevent the slow decay of bilateral commerce. The influx of returnees was not large, completely disappearing in the first decade of the following century (da Cunha 2012, 131–186; Mann 2007, 117–159). Without the help of these human brokers, Brazilian exports to Africa from 1913 to 1939 hovered between 1% and 2.7%, while imports ranged between 0.1% and 0.8% (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística 1941, 75–76). Brazil’s main African trading partner was South Africa, especially after the reorganization of trade produced by the outbreak of the Second World War. Commercial considerations thus played a large role in the Brazilian refusal to endorse sanctions against the apartheid regime until the mid-1970s (Penna Filho 2001). Nevertheless, policymakers saw colonial Africa more as a competitor in the global market for agricultural and mineral commodities than as a commercial partner. African demand for industrial products was largely met by metropolitan Europe, and Brazilian industrial exports were limited (Rodrigues 1964, 212). This situation only changed in the aftermath of the oil shock of 1973, when Brazil started to see Africa both as a source of oil and as a market for the exportation of goods and services. Connections were not, however, one way nor could they be so easily destroyed. Many families had members in both Lagos and Brazil, and some “Brazilians” moved back and forth across the South Atlantic. A few even constituted a sort of transatlantic middle class that took pride in its cosmopolitanism and helped maintain memories of Africa in Bahia until the mid-twentieth century, as Matory (1999) has shown. Others travelled to acquire traditional knowledge in order to increase

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

19

their legitimacy as religious leaders. Africans and Afro-Brazilians demanded African products for religious rituals to affirm their identities. Such identification was often not with Africa in general, but with certain zones of provenance, as had been the case during the slave trade era. Candomblé played a central role in this process, not only because it was based on prized memories and recollections from Africa but also because it was an active recreation that, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, sought to Africanize Afro-Brazilian cultural practices in the midst of disputes in the religious market and an intensifying process of racialization in post-abolition period (Parés 2013; Matory 2015). In the turn of the century, imagined Africas were an integral part of popular culture, as became especially clear during Carnival, above all in Bahia and later in Rio de Janeiro (Butler 1998, 168–209; Albuquerque 2002). As Brazil was (and remains) a racist society, the police repressed these cultural manifestations, and most Afro-­ Brazilian intellectuals in the First Republic, however, mostly ignored or even rejected Africa in their quest for legitimacy (Alberto 2011, 64–67, 104–107, 127). Nonetheless, Afro-Brazilian popular culture persisted and even started gaining legitimacy in the 1930s as one component of Brazilian national identity, especially during Vargas’ Estado Novo (Romo 2010, 86–112; Ickes 2013). This development was connected to changes in how elite men saw Brazilian cultural connections with Africa. Racism informed the first sustained intellectual discussions of Africa and its contributions to Brazil, such as the work of Raimundo Nina Rodrigues. Nevertheless, he recognized Africa’s cultural diversity and tried to discern its impact on the New World, conceptualizing it as a necessary step to the understanding of Brazil. Gilberto Freyre went further and echoed what the politician and champion of the illegal slave trade Bernardo de Vasconcelos had said almost a century earlier when he stated that Africans civilized America while the Portuguese had only “syphilized” it – pun very much intended. His optimistic interpretation of the Brazilian social formation in Masters and Slaves (1933) was premised on a positive evaluation of African contributions to Brazil, largely because the majority of the enslaved came from the “most advanced” regions of the “dark continent.” Instead of looking to Africa to explain Brazilian problems, the sociologist located on the eastern shore of the South Atlantic the origin of the main Brazilian qualities (Romo 2010, 47–85). In Freyre’s telling, however, these African traits could only express themselves because Portuguese colonists were singularly characterized by openness and lack of racial pride, allowing them to mix freely with Native American and African women. His work helped consolidate and disseminate the mythology of racial democracy that would become a central tenet of the worldview of many white and upper-class Brazilians, including almost all diplomats that would represent Brazil in Africa in the post-war and decolonization years. The sudden emergence of independent African nations in the international stage gave the Brazilian claim of African heritage new relevance – despite the fact that it was wielded mostly by white men who saw Africa as an abstraction that reflected their understandings of Brazil. Another transatlantic tie got in the way, however. Brazilian diplomatic closeness to authoritarian Portugal (partially on account of the pressure exerted by the sizable

20

L. Marques and T. Krause

Portuguese diaspora) and the acceptance of Freyre’s lusotropicalism – a theory fully developed in the 1950s that highlighted supposedly positive aspects of Portuguese colonialism  – precluded supporting the independence of the Portuguese colonies (Dávila 2010, 11–38). At the same time, there was no policy for the new African countries, but their independence was quickly recognized. Nevertheless, by 1960, there were still only two Brazilian embassies in Africa: one in Cairo, Egypt (created in 1910), and another in Pretoria, South Africa (created in 1948). Brazilian diplomatic engagement with Africa would only start to increase in the 1961–1962 burst, when six more embassies were created, and then again during the military dictatorship (Dávila 2010, 39–243). Lastly, it must be highlighted that decolonization also marked the start of direct (though weak) African influence on the Movimento Negro, as can be gleamed in publications such as the Quilombo magazine, which translated and published noted African authors of the Negritude movement such as Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire. This helped Afro-Brazilian intellectuals claim that they “had a special role in moving national culture forward.” Other black newspapers started covering African politics in the 1950s, which began to be seen as relevant to Afro-Brazilians (Alberto 2011, 221–222). The eruption of the colonial wars in Angola, Guinea-­ Bissau and Mozambique in 1961 would pose even greater challenges to Brazilian diplomacy and culminate in the break with the traditional policy of support to Portuguese colonialism.

5.1  The Weight of the Past From this overview, we can surmise some conclusions that may illuminate the present. It is crucial to understand that Brazil-Africa relations developed in an international context. This was never a purely bilateral relationship because of the influence of European powers – Portugal first and foremost but then the Dutch, British and French. Later, North Americans and Russians became influential as decolonization gathered steam, and presently, the Chinese have played an important role in the continent. The diversity of African geopolitics made these relationships even more complex: the connections between Brazil and Dahomey were quite different from those that linked Brazil to Angola. The same can be said today. Thus, Brazil-Africa relations were never unitary whether we look at the eighteenth or the twentieth-first century. If there was ever a common element in all these relationships, it was that strong links generally depended on the creation of alliances with powerful elites in Africa, whether they involved the King of Dahomey and Luso-Brazilian slave merchants in the late eighteenth century or the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht and the dos Santos ruling family in independent Angola. These were mutually beneficial relationships for those involved at the top but were based on the exploitation of African populations and reinforced the extractive character of African institutions  – and arguably of Brazilian ones as well.

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

21

Brazil-Africa relations, however, were never exclusively economic. The almost five million enslaved Africans who were forcibly carried across the Atlantic created new identities in the New World based on their memories and imaginations of Africa. Many of their descendants would preserve traditions and invent new ones, ensuring that Africa would continue to be part of their self-identification, as can be seen above all in popular culture. Therefore, cultural links may have been the most resilient because they were part of self-fashioning strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, as the tá bom and agudá peoples in Ghana and Nigeria and candomblé devotees in Brazil make evident. White elites would in turn see Brazil-Africa relations through the prism of racism and their own economic and political interests. They saw Africa first as a reservoir of labour and market for Brazilian goods, then as a place best left forgotten after 1850 and finally as a potential area of global influence in the post-war world because of cultural connections that they imagined but did not understand. Only the emergence of mass politics favoured the partial incorporation of Afro-Brazilian cultural practices by the Brazilian state, as they became part of an effort to develop a specific national identity based on the idea of harmonious race relations (therefore different from the United States) and a potential world power.

References Alberto, Paulina. 2011. Terms of inclusion: Black intellectuals in twentieth-century Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Albuquerque, Wlamyra. 2002. Esperanças de boaventuras: construções da África e africanismos na Bahia (1887–1910). Estudos Afro-Asiáticos 24 (2): 215–245. Alexandre, Valentim. 2004. The Portuguese empire, 1825-1890: Ideology and economics. In From slave trade to empire: Europe and the colonization of Black Africa, 1780s–1880s, ed. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, 110–132. London/New York: Routledge. Amos, Alcione, and Ebenezer Ayesu. 2002. I am Brazilian’: History of the Tabon, Afro-Brazilians in Accra, Ghana. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 6: 35–58. Berbel, Márcia Regina, Rafael de Bivar Marquese, and Tâmis Parron. 2016. Slavery and politics: Brazil and Cuba, 1790–1850. Translated by Leonardo Marques. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Butler, Kim. 1998. Freedoms given, freedoms won: Afro-Brazilians in post-abolition São Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick/New Jersey/London: Rutgers University Press. Castillo, Lisa Earl. 2016. Mapping the nineteenth-century Brazilian returnee movement: Demographics, life stories and the question of slavery. Atlantic Studies 13 (1): 25–52. da Cunha, Manuela Carneiro. 2012. Negros, estrangeiros: os escravos libertos e sua volta à África. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Dávila, Jerry. 2010. Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the challenge of African decolonization, 1950–1980. Durham/London: Duke University Press. de Alencastro, Luiz Felipe. 1998. A economia política dos descobrimentos. In A descoberta do homem e do mundo, ed. Adauto Novaes, 193–207. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. ———. 2018. The trade in the living: The formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Albany: SUNY University Press. ———. 2019. As três eras do Atlântico Sul. Revista USP (123): 13–28.

22

L. Marques and T. Krause

Domingues da Silva, Daniel. 2008. The Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão, 1680–1846: Volume, routes and organisation. Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 29 (4): 477–501. Eltis, David. 1987. Economic growth and the ending of the transatlantic slave trade. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2019. Iberian dominance and the intrusion of the northern Europeans into the Atlantic world: Slave trading as a result of economic growth? Almanack 22: 496–550. Ferreira, Roquinaldo. 2012. Cross-cultural exchange in the Atlantic world: Angola and Brazil during the era of the slave trade. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014. Abolicionismo versus colonialismo: rupturas e continuidades em Angola (século XIX). Mulemba: Revista Angolana de Ciências Sociais 4 (8): 101–126. Ferreira, Frederico. 2018. O imperador e o príncipe: a participação do império brasileiro na crise dinástica no reino do Congo (1857–1860). Rio de Janeiro: Autografia. Green, Toby. 2012. The rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589. New York: Cambridge University Press. Guizelin, Gilberto. 2016. Depois dos navios negreiros: a criação do Consulado Brasileiro em Luanda e as relações do Império com a colônia portuguesa de Angola, 1822–1860. PhD dissertation, São Paulo: Universidade Estadual Paulista. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. 2005. Slavery and African ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the links. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Ickes, Scott. 2013. African-Brazilian culture and regional identity in Bahia, Brazil. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. 1941. Repertório Estatístico do Brasil, Quadros Retrospectivos n. 1, separata do Anuário Estatístico do Brasil  – Ano V  – 1939/40. Rio de Janeiro: Serviço Gráfico do IBGE. Lara, Silvia. 2016. Quem eram os ‘negros do Palmar’? In Escravidão e cultura afro-brasileira: temas e problemas em torno da obra de Robert Slenes, ed. Gladys Sabrina Ribeiro, Jonis Freire, Matha Campos Abreu, and Sidney Chalhoub, 57–85. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp. Lima, Monica. 2013. Histórias entre margens: retornos de libertos para a África partindo do Rio de Janeiro no século XIX. Revista de História Comparada 7 (1): 67–114. Lindsay, Lisa. 1994. ‘To return to the bosom of their fatherland’: Brazilian immigrants in nineteenth-­century Lagos. Slavery & Abolition 15 (1): 22–50. Macedo, José Rivair. 2018. The embassy of Daomé in Salvador (1750): Diplomatic protocols and political affirmation of a state in expansion in West Africa. Brazilian Journal of African Studies 3 (6): 105–121. Mann, Kristin. 2007. Slavery and the birth of an African city: Lagos, 1760–1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Marcocci, Giuseppe. 2012. A Consciência de um Império: Portugal e o seu mundo (sécs. XV– XVII). Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra. Marques, Leonardo. 2016. The United States and the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas, 1776–1867. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Marquese, Rafae, and Dale Tomich. 2020. Slavery in the Paraíba Valley and the formation of the world coffee market in the nineteenth century. In Atlantic transformations: Empire, politics, and slavery during the nineteenth century, ed. Dale Tomich, 193–223. Albany: SUNY Press. Martins, Diego de Cambraia. 2019. A Companhia Geral de Comércio Do Grão-Pará e Maranhão e Os Grupos Mercantis No Impérios Português (c.1755-c.1787). PhD dissertation, São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Matory, J.Lorand. 1999. The English professors of Brazil: On the diasporic roots of the Yoruba nation. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1): 72–103. Matory, J. Lorand. 2015. In-depth review: The formation of Candomblé, by Luis Nicolau Parés. The Americas 72 (4): 609–628. Mattos, Hebe. 2014. Colonização e escravidão no Brasil – Memória e Historiografia. In O Brasil Colonial, vol. I (1443–1580), ed. João Fragoso and Fátima Gouvêa, 41–104. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.

The Longue Durée of Brazil-Africa Relations (c. 1450–1960)

23

Mendes, António de Almeida. 2018. Portugal, Morocco, and Guinea: Reconfiguration of the North Atlantic at the end of the middle ages. In From Al-Andalus to the Americas (13th–17th centuries): Destruction and construction of societies, ed. Thomas Glick, Antonio Malpica, Fèlix Retamero, and Josep Torró, 401–428. Leiden/Boston: Brill. ———. 2008. Les réseaux de la traite ibérique dans l’Atlantique nord (1440–1640). Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 2008/4 (63e année): 739–768. Mesquita, João Marcos. 2019. O comércio ilegal de escravos no Atlântico: a trajetória de Manoel Pinto da Fonseca, c. 1831-c.1850. MA thesis, Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Miller, Joseph. 2004. Retention, reinvention, and remembering: Restoring identities through enslavement in Angola and under slavery in Brazil. In Enslaving connections: Changing cultures of Africa and Brazil during the era of slavery, ed. José C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy. Amherst/New York: Humanity Books. Parés, Luis Nicolau. 2013. The formation of Candomblé: Vodun history and ritual in Brazil. Translated by Richard Vernon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Parron, Tâmis, Alain El Youssef, and Bruno Estafanes. 2014. Vale expandido: contrabando negreiro e a construção de uma dinâmica política nacional no Império do Brasil. Almanack 7: 137–160. Penna Filho, Pio. 2001. África do Sul e Brasil: diplomacia e comércio (1918–2000). Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 44 (1): 69–93. Postma, Johannes, and Stuart B.  Schwartz. 2003. The Dutch Republic and Brazil as commercial partners on the west African coast during the eighteenth century. In Riches from Atlantic commerce: Dutch transatlantic trade and shipping, 1585–1817, ed. Johannes Postma and V. Enthoven. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Rodrigues, José Honório. 1964. Brasil e África: outro horizonte. Relações e Contribuições mútuas. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Rodrigues, Jaime. 2005. De costa a costa: escravos, marinheiros e intermediários do tráfico negreiro de Angola ao Rio de Janeiro, 1780–1860. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Romo, Anadelia. 2010. Brazil’s living museum: Race, reform, and tradition in Bahia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Sidbury, James, and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra. 2011. Mapping Ethnogenesis in the early modern Atlantic. The William and Mary Quarterly 68 (2): 181–208. Sweet, James. 1997. The Iberian roots of American racist thought. The William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1): 143–166. Thornton, John. 2008. Les États de l’Angola et la formation de Palmares (Brésil). Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales 2008/4 (63e année): 769–797. Thornton, John, and Linda Heywood. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. New York: Cambridge University Press. Verger, Pierre. 1976. Trade relations between the bight of Benin and Bahia from the 17th to the 19th century. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. Wheat, David. 2016. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa Pedro Seabra

1  Introduction In January 2019, a Portuguese military contingent was dispatched to the Central African Republic (CAR) under the auspices of the EU Training Mission (EUTM-­ CAR). In itself, the decision did not prove particularly novel given how Portugal had already been contributing to international pacification efforts in-country since 2015. What proved more noteworthy, however, was the inclusion for the first time of three Brazilian army officials embedded in its midst. After dragging an extensive process of private and public consultations for nearly 3 years over whether to send a contingent of its own, Brazil ended up dashing UN expectations and opting instead for a much more subdued presence on the ground (Victor and Alencastro 2018). In other words, one of the cornerstones of Brazil’s contemporary engagement with Africa surreptitiously turned into a diminished footprint of what the country was able to provide. This outcome further solidified a reverse of fortunes after a decade and a half in which most observers would have had likely bet on an inverted dynamic. More strikingly, it came on the heels of an opportunity provided by a partner which Brazil had, witting or unwittingly, sought to circumvent in recent years. As Brazil significantly increased its profile in African Lusophone countries, it benefitted from an added erosion of Portuguese clout on the ground. Hence, and given the stark policy changes that have recently taken place in Brasília, this chapter inquires whether previously lauded headways towards Africa in the high-politics domain were indeed organic in nature and in content or, in fact, were largely achieved at the expense of other established actors. The geographic selection is set on where P. Seabra (*) Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_3

25

26

P. Seabra

Brazil’s priority has been more intense, whenever any wider African agenda was rolled out in contemporary history. This regional choice comes with one important caveat, i.e. inroads in the CAR will never be on the same plaining field as Brazil’s track record with, for example, Angola or Mozambique. Inferences that apply to the broader continent are therefore more difficult to extrapolate. That said, such clear-­ cut geographic preference allows to explore the set of conditions that instilled Brazil’s expanded profile in the first place. The core claim lies on the necessity to go against pre-established narratives of inevitability that Brazil succeeded, succeeds or will succeed in Africa just because. A more critical approach is in need if the current debate is to move forward. I argue that Brazil has only been able to venture into Africa and will only do so once more whenever the right set of externally driven conditions are in place. That includes not only taking advantage of unexpected opportunities but also filling in gaps made possible by other players competing for the same space of influence. In both cases, expansive cycles with corresponding material resources are paramount. Yet, if credible commitments are not dully provided across the Atlantic, any occasional upswing of the sort will invariably prove short-lived. Based on interviews, diplomatic cables1 and a review of previous literature, I recast Brazil’s agenda towards African Lusophone countries in juxtaposition to Portugal’s own perceived external downturn. I begin by elaborating on Brazil’s recent change of fortunes and the need to adjust the lens of analysis adopted until this date. The recurrent push-and-pull forces enacted by both Brazil and Portugal over time towards Africa are then explored. Afterwards, I unpack the aftermath of Guinea-Bissau’s 2012 military coup and the adhesion of Equatorial Guinea to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) as two underexplored cases that can provide key insights over Brazil’s overall ambitions. The chapter concludes by offering a reinterpretation of Brazil’s net gains in Africa and arguing for its susceptibility to changing political-­ economic cycles. Through this approach, the conditions required for a renewed burst of engagement with the continent are best brought into evidence.

2  How to Perceive Brazil in Africa The year 2003 marked a consensus amongst most Brazilian analysts and scholars: under Lula da Silva, Brazil began to unapologetically profess a more assertive foreign policy towards Africa, aimed at conciliating different geopolitical and economic-­oriented vectors, all the while attempting to become a credible partner across the Atlantic. The bulk of research lines were quick to consider Brazil’s 1  The chapter benefits from diplomatic communication obtained under the Law for Information Access and exchanged between the Secretary General of Foreign Affairs (SERE – Secretaria de Estado das Relações Exteriores) within the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and different Brazilian diplomatic representations in Africa.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

27

initiatives as neatly falling within the categories of “political discourse/prestige diplomacy,” “economic interest/soft imperialism” and “socio-economic development/southern solidarity” (Visentini 2010, 80–82; see also White 2010, 228; Saraiva 2010). However, a slower dynamic had also already taken hold when Dilma Rousseff became president (2011–2016). Unlike her predecessor, the general lack of interest for foreign affairs led to a perception of an overall decline in the country’s status abroad (Cervo and Lessa 2014). This posture was further aggravated by a deteriorating economic context that prompted a detachment from previous multilateral initiatives and the decrease of resources available to the country’s foreign policy apparatus. By the time Michel Temer (2016–2018) took office after a convoluted impeachment process, Africa was once again at the low end of the external agenda, in a complete volte-face over the course of 15 years. A thorough recap of this period covering three distinct governments is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, two reasons underline the need to revisit past work that espoused fairly well-established and uncontested narratives on Brazil and Africa. First, the bulk of previous output on Brazilian-African interactions essentially worked as an echo chamber of an official discourse that was too confident on its own success and sustainability (e.g. Stolte 2015; cf. Abdenur 2018; Seibert and Visentini 2019; Dye and Alencastro 2020). The number of Brazilian embassies that opened during this period, for instance, was constantly brought up as undisputed proof of this impetus, regardless of their actual size or lack of adequate staffing to perform the tasks they were assigned to in the first place.2 Second, this discourse was also particularly adept at underscoring a logic of mutual necessity and interaction, building upon the “idea that Brazil has not only suffered, but also overcome many of the problems that plague Africa,” thus justifying Brazil projecting itself as a player in its own right (Santos et al. 2019, 10). Overall, the crux was straightforward: politically, geographically and economically complementary vectors of engagement supported a set of self-reinforcing relations, all the while associated to a discourse that “Brazil possessed a sensibility” like no other at that particular moment in history. That much was made clear when, during his first visit to Africa in November 2003, Lula set the tone for what would become the ensuing approach: “For many years Brazil had its back turned to Africa. And we think it is time to catch up. I have the hope and belief that in these coming years, we will do more than what was done in the last 15 or 20 years” (Silva 2003). To be sure, these efforts did not deviate significantly from other approaches in the past. Yet, they were still cast as innovative enough to speak of a new chapter in Brazilian-African relations. How to then account for Brazil’s change of fortunes as of 2020? This discussion can be better informed if Brazil’s external claims are contextualized as part of 2  That included the opening of such posts as São Tomé and Principe (2003); Benin, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Conakry, Guinea (2006); Burkina Faso (2007), Mali and Brazzaville, Congo (2008); Botswana (2009); Mauritania (2010); Liberia (2011); Sierra Leone (2012); and Malawi (2013). Embassies in the DRC (2004) and Cameroon, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Togo (2005) were reopened as well. Brazil’s embassy in Nigeria was also transferred from Lagos to Abuja in 2004.

28

P. Seabra

similar efforts by other emerging or unsatisfied powers within the framework of the broader international order. Above all, these powers crave room: room to manoeuvre, room to establish themselves, room to be vocal about the issues they feel more strongly about and room to showcase their ability to perform, engage and create initiatives of their own. Vying for redistribution of power and international recognition as legitimate players synthetizes the bulk of what they aim at, when asserting their status abroad (Nel 2011; Gray and Murphy 2014). However, that kind of room is also pre-emptively restricted by a set of rules and institutions that work against any perceived outlier that seeks to break away. These countries have been able to successfully pierce through such rules and institutions on occasion and even make some visible progress in recent years. But the underpinning geopolitical dictums remain unfazed, meaning the odds are more readily stacked against them than the other way around. Complicating the outlook further, they are forced to resort to the same kind of behaviour as any other willing international actor, in the sense that they are required to project enough influence and display enough results so as to substantiate their claims. If they fail to do so, they will most likely incite the reverse effect of being labelled as ineffectual, inconsequential or just plainly irrelevant. Low odds of accomplishment and high expectations over outcomes make for a perilous combination whenever hefty external ambitions come into play. Yet, influence also comes in finite quantities, meaning there is only so much space for so many actors to try and enlist a given country to either follow or abide by X or Y initiative. Options have to be made, priorities have to be sorted out and preferences over one or the other partner have to be displayed at some point. Such state of affairs can be more usefully perceived if observed along a relational spectrum. One diametral pole can take up the form of opportunity-taking behaviour, in which such powers accept what the world offers, while benefiting from situations that fall largely outside of their control or unfold depending on unforeseen variables. That makes them extremely context-dependent but also potentially savvier in terms of how they choose to break with past constructs or be innovate in their external dealings. Meanwhile, the other pole can assume a more gap-filling course of action, in which rising powers benefit from the momentary downturn of previously established competitors on the ground, making way for other alternative solutions and initiatives to eventually take roots. In this case, room for assertive displays of leadership is directly linked to the (mis)fortunes of other players and thrives on their downturns. Brazil’s overall agency to intervene can be claimed to be found along this broad spectrum, tilting one direction or the other or even crossing both, according to the breadth of its own national capabilities. If those capabilities falter or happen to be diminished in some form, then it becomes irrelevant whether unexpected circumstances or breathing room from other players suffices, as Brazil will not be able to benefit from “make-it or break-it” situations. The emphasis on material conditions also allows to refocus attentions on the sustainability of any external impulse of the kind. But before laying forward two examples that can help clarify this rationale, the next section zeroes in on a possible intervenient actor who might have either

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

29

contributed to such timely opportunities or provided Brazil with such gaps to emerge in the first place with regard to Africa.

3  How to Perceive Brazil vs. Portugal in Africa A set of structural differences invariably stand out, whenever Brazil and Portugal are pitted under the same analytical framework. The clear disproportion in size, resources and overall clout in the international system all contribute to fuel skewed conclusions that preferentially tilt one actor over the other. That said, over the years, Portugal remained a constant for many Brazilian policymakers due to previous historical-­cultural connections alone. This symbolical hold was largely owed to the persisting influence of deeply lusophile Brazilian elites in tandem with a sizeable Portuguese community in-country, who often succeeded in nudging the official line towards Lisbon whenever so required. Historically, Brazilian inroads in Africa also directly benefit from the disaggregation of Portugal’s colonial presence. But as Brazil’s military rulers consolidated their grip on power after the 1964 coup, they also began to entertain less previous automatic alignments, including any plans of a common Luso-Brazilian community that could box aspirations of reaching out to Africa in an autonomous fashion (Selcher 1976). The defining moment came with Portugal’s democratization in 1974, which produced a ripple effect in the form of the ensuing decolonization of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Sensing an opportunity to dispel previous unsavoury associations with the Salazar regime and make headways with the newly independent countries, Brazil moved quickly to position itself as an alternative partner.3 Yet, this approach also heralded an incoming logic of competition with Portugal for the same space in those same countries, more so as the latter sought to reimagine its African credentials and navigate the socio-economic consequences of a hasted decolonization, the overt hostility of new Marxist-led governments in the former colonies and infrequent attempts at mediating local warring sides. One route adopted to circumvent these issues was to try and reinvent Portugal’s postcolonial role as an exclusive bridge-builder between Africa and the West, which, in itself, presupposed not giving leeway to any other novel actors on the ground (Reis and de Oliveira 2018). Hence, even if prosaic formulas adopted by Portuguese diplomats deeming Brazil a “competitor but [still] an ally” in Africa continued to populate official discourse, a zero-sum perception over each country’s insertions and opportunities in Lusophone countries remained (Gama 1985, 286–287; Carvalho 2016). Meanwhile, Portugal’s own relations with African Lusophone countries remained as complex and as prolific in announcements, official visits and rhetoric, through a 3  The swift recognition of Guinea-Bissau’s independence on 18 July 1974 or of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA – Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) government in Angola on 6 November 1975 clearly attested to the new Brazilian orientations towards Africa. See, for example, Dávila (2010).

30

P. Seabra

successive combination of advances and retreats, subject to cyclical adverse economic cycles. This perception was only further accentuated after the 2011 financial crisis, which led to an international bailout programme that entailed major cuts in Portuguese government expenditure and directly led to a scale-down of resources allocated to African partners: between 2010 and 2014, Portuguese development aid dropped from 0.29% of the gross national income (GNI) to 0.19%, amounting to a variation from €490 million to €324 million (Carvalho 2018, 152). Additionally, more embassies were closed in Africa during the 2000s (8) than in the two decades following decolonization (4), leading to a more spartan diplomatic footprint on the ground (Seabra 2019, 78–80). Above all, Portuguese policy towards Africa remained very much tied to a lingering historical baggage difficult to overcome. When dealing with cases of transnational corruption, for example, Portugal often sought to avoid any “tantrum that damages Portuguese interests, from the most materially tangible, such as our investments, to the most metaphysically sacred – the cohesion of the Portuguese-speaking world” (Soares de Oliveira 2005, 68). The multilateral side of this alleged cohesion experienced more success due to the sheer existence of the CPLP. Although based on initial informal meetings between African Lusophone countries in the 1980s, the negotiation process towards its creation still proved thorny enough (Monteiro 1996). However, its political usefulness soon became clear in terms of fostering common positions in the face of crisis situations (e.g. Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste), exchange of support for candidacies for international high-profile positions or its formal recognition as a relevant actor by other multilateral organizations.4 For its part, Portugal sought to become the main driving force, both logistically – with the availability of the CPLP’s headquarters in Lisbon – and financially. However, that also implied avoiding any perception of ownership in order to accommodate the rise of Angola and Brazil at the regional and international levels, respectively (Santos 2003; Hewitt et  al. 2017; Carvalho 2018). The evolution of the contributions to the budget of the CPLP’s Executive Secretariat illustrates these developments: if by 2005 Portugal stood out as the main financier, as of 2013, this role began to be assumed with more prominence by Brazil, with Angola also matching the Portuguese quota in ensuing years – despite the irregularity of both Brazilians and Angolans with actual payments (Seabra 2019, 84; Herpolsheimer 2019). However, sharing a common multilateral framework did not prevent tokens of mutual dismissal, whenever Portugal and Brazil’s broader interests down South were in question. The most public episode during this period occurred when a new discussion over the geopolitical limits of the Atlantic was triggered during the 2010 revision of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Strategic Concept. At the time, Portugal went out of its way to include a reference to the South Atlantic, in an attempt to further burnish its bridge-building credentials with Africa before the 4  The UN General Assembly granted the CPLP full observer status in 1999 through resolution A/ RES/54/10, while the European Union (EU) signed a memorandum with the CPLP’s Executive Secretariat in 2007 aimed at fighting poverty, fostering democracy and human rights, cultural diversity and economic and social development.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

31

remaining transatlantic community (Seabra 2014). Brazil, however, perceived it differently and interpreted such efforts as only contributing to the perpetuation of solutions crafted in the North and imposed upon the South without the South’s own involvement or input. Former Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim was particularly vocal over this clash of views, owing to Brazil’s own rise in the international stage at the time as well as to suspicions over the US agenda for the surrounding region.5 Likewise, Former Minister of External Relations Celso Amorim squarely expressed the contradictions in dealing with Portugal over such issues: “I would say that Portugal has a certain poetic licence to be in the South Atlantic, thanks to CPLP. But evidently, the fact Portugal belongs to NATO remains a limitation to the type of cooperation that you can have” between the two countries.6 To be sure, Portuguese officials also frequently looked down on Brazil as an actor all too eager to be taken serious in Africa, but not necessarily prepared for the nitty and gritty of events on the ground. The reasoning being made in Lisbon pointed to a “frontal clash with the very sovereign positions related to the projection of power in Brazil, or what Brazil imagines as being its ability to project power in the Atlantic”.7 Overall, when considering the intersection of agendas and interests, a modicum of unofficial competition between the two countries in Africa was to be expected. That does not mean it supplanted the gist of bilateral relations. A general emphasis on “special fraternity bonds,” “historical and cultural affinities” and “tradition of friendship, collaboration and deep cultural roots” (Fonseca 2010; cf. Seabra and Abdenur 2018, 265–266), concentrated around a single common multilateral setting, still allowed to defuse more unsavoury dynamics. However, it did not necessarily pre-empt their occurrence either. The following sections focus on how the positions of both countries invariably collided with regard to Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea, thus paving the way for a more assertive Brazilian presence in Lusophone Africa.

4  D  ealing with the Aftermath of the 2012 Coup in Guinea-Bissau As a common Lusophone denominator, Guinea-Bissau warranted regular attention from its international peers over the years due to multiple crises and political instability (MacQueen 2003; Embaló 2012). Between 1998 and 2010, the country had a total of four presidents, four acting presidents and 11 prime ministers, in a clear testament to the need for continuous external support. However, on 12 April 2012, after the first round of voting for presidential elections, a new coup d’état took place

 Telegram 715.6 from BRASEMB LISBON to SERE, date: 16-09-2010  Interview with Celso Amorim, former Brazil’s external relations (2003–2010) and defence (2011–2015) minister, Brasília, 15 May 2013 7  Interview with high-ranking Portuguese governmental official, Lisbon, 14 September 2013 5 6

32

P. Seabra

that led to the arrest of interim President Raimundo Pereira and Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Júnior (then frontrunner in said elections), both from the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC – Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde). This turn of events came on the heels of consecutive international Security Sector Reform (SSR) efforts that failed to rein in parts of the armed forces. The situation was made even more complex due to the presence in-country of the Angolan Military Mission in Guinea-­ Bissau (MISSANG – Missão Militar de Angola), itself considered a compromise solution following similar episodes of political-military instability the year prior. MISSANG, however, had come to be perceived as overly threatening to the lucrative interests of local elites and as backing the efforts led by Prime Minister Gomes Júnior to eradicate unwanted elements in the military. After a few days of uncertainty, on 18 April, both the mutinous military officials and some opposition parties agreed to form a national transition government – without the participation of PAIGC – thus entirely bypassing the abovementioned electoral process. The threat of sanctions on the coup’s perpetrators by the overall international community, including the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU), soon became the main tool to try and break the impasse. However, rifts quickly emerged between two key multilateral platforms, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the CPLP. The former, supported by Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, advocated for a year-long transitional process; the latter, supported by Portugal and Angola, defended an immediate resumption of the electoral process. Even though UN officials repeatedly called for a unified strategy between both organizations, such an outcome proved elusive.8 Amidst these developments, Brazil began by fully supporting a common Lusophone stance and demanding a return to legal order. However, as the crisis endured on, Brazilian authorities began to entertain the notion of working with the transitional authorities and thus break away from the initial CPLP consensus. Given the centrality that Portugal attributed to such a multilateral framework for its own reimagined ties with Africa, divergences invariably came to light. The starting point for both countries in Guinea-Bissau was uneven to begin with. The disparity in the support attributed to local authorities, for instance, attested to such a duality. For the 2012 presidential elections, Portugal had made a direct pledge of US$400,000, while Brazil channelled €150,000 through the CPLP.9 Still, Brazil often held Portugal to task over what occurred on the ground: “Portugal, historically, is an unavoidable actor for historical reasons that we all know. Portugal has, I think, a differentiated responsibility. After all, [Guinea-Bissau] belonged to Portugal for almost 500 years and much of what happens or does not happen in the

8  See, for example, United Nations Security Council’s “Report of the Secretary-General on developments in Guinea-Bissau and on the activities of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in that country” (S/2012/554) and United Nations Security Council’s “Report of the Secretary-General on the restoration of constitutional order in Guinea-Bissau” (S/2012/704). 9  Telegram 98 from BRASEMB BISSAU to SERE, date: 03-02-2012.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

33

country is the responsibility of Portugal”.10 Regardless, Brazil perceived a brewing opportunity to insert itself in  local dynamics and make headways as a self-titled neutral broker between different political-military factions. The lack of an unsavoury historical baggage like Portugal together with common language and cultural ties was then understood as enough of a differential factor to instil confidence over Brazil’s own chances of success – particularly when compared with others who had previously tried and failed or seemed to be in retreat. As the post-coup situation dragged on and international discussions moved to the fold of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (UNPCB), the opportunities for a more increased profile expanded exponentially. The fact that Brazil already presided over its specific configuration on Guinea-Bissau and that it was set to preside to the overall UNPCB between 2014 and 2015 – particularly after the assignment of former External Relations Minister, Antônio Patriota, as permanent representative to the UN in 2013 –, directly led to a more assertive position. However, such a choice of seeking out further reputational dividends also implied new clashes over who to partner with: We had a [CPLP] member state [Angola] directly involved in another member state [Guinea-Bissau]. The presence of Angolan troops was instrumentalized for the coup (…). The CPLP was tied to Angola’s position, given how it held the organization’s pro tempore presidency at the time. On the other hand, Portugal allied itself to Angola and assumed a very radical position towards the coup. (…) We agreed on the principle of zero tolerance, but the way things were carried out ended up characterizing itself as a conflict between CPLP and ECOWAS – which in reality was an instrumentalization of the conflict between Angola and Nigeria, due to internal African issues. (…) We thought it was much easier to solve this in the framework of the UN than within the CPLP, precisely because the CPLP had a country holding the presidency who was directly invested or that very specific interests at the same time. (…) The CPLP ended up not playing a bigger role because it was caught up in this impasse.11

Two sets of reasons can account for Brazil’s evolving stance during this episode. The first deals with Brazil’s own expectations that it would eventually “come to assume an even more relevant role in leading the SSR process”.12 Following an initial bilateral agreement signed in 2009, plans had already been drafted for a Brazilian mission on the ground that would ideally succeed where other international efforts had failed: i.e. to rein in the military and advance an actual reform process. The mission was to be structured around the following goals: to establish a productive dialogue with the Bissau-Guinean Armed Forces; (ii) to analyze the local military reality, in order to better define existing needs; (iii) to collect information, including costs, with a view to making a decision on the installation of an officers’ training centre; and (iv) to identify synergies with other partners, in order to make

 Oral history interview with former Brazilian ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, Jorge Geraldo Kadri. Rio de Janeiro, CPDOC/Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), 2014, 22. 11  Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 1, Brasília, 12 June 2013. 12  Telegram 207 from BRASEMB BISSAU to SERE, date: 21-03-2011, p. 2. 10

34

P. Seabra

Brazil’s contribution to SSR more effective.13 The dynamics of the 2012 coup, however, effectively brought such designs to a standstill. By not pushing away the new de facto rulers in Bissau, Brazil still hoped to recoup its losses and relaunch its proposed project down the line while at the same time ensuring a prime interlocutor role in between the country, the region and the world at large. Second, Brazil’s move towards decoupling its position from other Lusophone peers can also be contextualized by the efforts put into a previous Brazil-ECOWAS summit that took place in 2010 in Cape Verde and which had been crafted as a way for the former to reach out to West Africa in a more direct fashion. Amidst broader governmental priorities across the Atlantic, establishing working channels with proven multilateral institutions in the region proved a pragmatic approach. That required not only nurturing those same channels but also ensuring they would not be disrupted by other alternatives, deemed less institutionalized or possibly more constraining for Brazilian interests. Above all, “we did not want to enter into confrontation with ECOWAS.  Brazil sought to establish mechanisms of dialogue with members of ECOWAS – who also showed very little flexibility. That’s why Brazil, unilaterally, tried to reach a middle ground” with regard to Guinea-Bissau.14 In this case, the benefits of opportunity taking were brought into evidence, as Brazil sought to make the best of what the regional context was providing at that specific moment in time. Sensing a favourable set of circumstances, Brazil managed to stake a tentative claim as a stabilization promoter all the while seeking to advance its own subregional priorities. Yet, despite initial displays of material conditions to back up its aims, as the following years would show, the sustainability of such an approach was left very much up in the air.

5  The Adhesion of Equatorial Guinea to the CPLP Long considered a standard-bearer for other repressive regimes in Africa, Equatorial Guinea has skilfully pursued a strategy of international engagement as a way to circumvent occasional criticisms over its internal record that included submitting applications to as many international fora as possible. The main goal was one and the same: to obtain legitimacy and official backing to the regime of Teodoro Obiang, in power since 1979. In this context, the CPLP emerged as a useful alternative. After winning over observer status in 2006, the country began to gradually inch closer towards full-fledged membership, following an agreement on a roadmap for its adhesion during the 2010 CPLP summit in Luanda. Such a roadmap essentially consisted of a normative litmus test and included specific indicators in terms of “adopting and using Portuguese in Equatorial Guinea,” “incorporation and implementation of the organization’s set of norms,” “rehabilitation of historical and

13 14

 Telegram 315 from BRASEMB BISSAU to SERE, date: 16-05-2011, pp. 2, 6.  Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 1, Brasília, 12 June 2013.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

35

cultural memory,” “institutional communication” and the “promotion and integration of civil society in the CPLP’s activities” (Sá 2016, 156). In practice, this was translated into the need to observe a generalized respect for human rights and democratic principles, the abolishment of the death penalty and the teaching of the Portuguese language on a national scale. Simultaneously, the choice to abide by this roadmap was also perceived as pushing a final decision down the road, until more concrete commitments could be extracted from local authorities at later stages. During this protracted formal process, Portugal found itself isolated in its bid to prevent the entry of a new member with less than recommendable credentials as far as human rights and good governance were concerned. On the other side, Brazil and Angola pushed for a quick adhesion. Their underlined rationale was to build upon Malabo’s oil reserves – the third largest African producer, after Nigeria and Angola – and eventually turn the CPLP into an energetic and economic bloc, instead of just a forum reserved to the worldwide promotion of a common language: The process is currently slow. The expectation from Equatorial Guinea was that it would not be that slow and, in a way, neither did we. (…) When they formally applied in 2010, it was our expectation at the time they would be accepted. And then that did not happen because Portugal threw a tantrum. Which was legitimate, I am not questioning Portugal’s motives, I think it was mostly an issue of accountability before its civil society. (…) [But] There is a political issue in there that it is important. Our vision is more political than technical, whether or not they speak Portuguese, even though that is relevant. I think Equatorial Guinea is a country that is searching for a space in Africa at this moment. They were rejected by the Francophonie, they were never well treated, and they are now searching for space within the Lusophone world. We recognize that it is not a perfect country, far from it. But it is a country that is slowly opening itself and we think it is better to promote transformation by inclusion than by isolation. (…) I think it strengthens the CPLP as a space of dialogue and political concertation. Our [Brazil’s] vision nowadays, we see more the CPLP as a political body rather than an instrument to defend the language. Of course, the issue of language is strategic and important, but more because of its political dimension. The cultural subdomain is the basis, the soil under which the CPLP sustains itself. But the language issue is only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one to sustain the CPLP in the long term.15

The deadlock came to a head in 2014 during the CPLP summit in Dili. By that time, the requirements in the roadmap had hardly been met. Equatorial Guinean officials claimed that a temporary moratorium on the death penalty and the signing of cooperation agreements for the training of Portuguese-speaking teachers amounted to enough evidence of its overall compliance. Brazil perceived it as enough of a glass half full: In the case of Equatorial Guinea, it evolved from associated observer to member state because of a possibility that does not exist in many countries: through an executive decree, establishing Portuguese as an official language. Of course, that is something somewhat arbitrary from the Equatorial Guinean government but it shows a willingness to include Portuguese, to promote Portuguese.16 [Moreover, the] issue of Equatorial Guinea, instead of diminishing, strengths the capacity of the CPLP, not only because of the interest in the Portuguese language but because the CPLP was able to extract this commitment on the 15 16

 Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 1, Brasília, 12 June 2013.  Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 2, Brasília, 8 December 2017.

36

P. Seabra death penalty moratorium – which other groupings and institutions that traditionally work in the human rights domain, were never able to achieve.17

The subsequent result was a concerted push by Brazil and Angola towards formalizing Equatorial Guinea’s immediate adhesion in Dili. The lines of tension between the remaining members were brought up to a point that a possible dismemberment of the CPLP all together was even put on the table if membership was not to be granted at that particular moment in time (Monteiro 2014; Ribeiro 2014). Two sets of arguments can account for this push. The first, already alluded to, consisted of the economic and commercial opportunities identified in term of bringing Malabo into the Lusophone fold. Closer ties with Brasília in preceding years had already foreshadowed considerable political and private interest, including in the energy domain. The rationale was pointedly encapsulated by Celso Amorim when visiting Malabo: “Business is business. (...) We have to imagine that this is an important area, rich in oil, with great possibilities of construction” (Uchoa 2010). Supporting local aims for full-blown membership of the CPLP was thus perceived as laying forward the ground for further opportunities by such Brazilian conglomerates, such as Queiroz Galvão or A.R.G., already present in the country or vying to expand to a new market in the continent (Zanini 2017, 195–221). Second, the dispute between two poles of countries within the same organization was also grounded in broader claims for leadership at the top. Unlike with Guinea-­ Bissau, where CPLP was mostly perceived as an obstacle against more productive relations with ECOWAS, in this case, Brazil recognized a clear opening to ensure this Lusophone platform could become more in tune with its own broader African agenda. The fact that different variable geometries of influence were required (like leaning on Angola to achieve a common goal) did not prove cause for concern, even more so when such a concerted effort also aimed to turn the CPLP less aligned with those preventing structural changes to its core. In other words, Brazil took advantage of Portugal’s external downturn and corresponding isolation to fill in a gap and achieve a stated goal of increasing the number of member states, thus increasing its clout within this particular multilateral setting. Concrete offers to send Brazilian teachers and support local Portuguese schooling efforts marked the immediate period afterwards. But much like with what happened in the engagement with Guinea-Bissau, Brazilian follow-up to adequately support the next stages of this significant policy move quickly dried out.

6  Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa With the benefit of hindsight and new access to sources and official information, any foreign policy development can be easily reconstructed under a different light. But even if the reinterpretation of the events that took place during those two processes 17

 Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 3, Brasília, 8 December 2017.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

37

is to be abided by, there is still one part of the equation missing, namely, the views from African countries themselves. Treating them as mere bystanders amidst these bursts of engagement by outside powers would lead us to incur in the same mistakes of the past, through which Brazil’s leadership drive was presumed to be uncontestably welcomed or accepted on equal measure across the entire continent. Instead of adopting such reductive uniformity, the discussion would be better served by perceiving such countries as gatekeepers of the relational spectrum between opportunity taking and gap filling, thus having the final say over the success of any external inroads of the sort. Their acquiescence to stay on board with such forays or dictate their eventual recession would be held by one trait: reliability, meaning the need to exhibit enough seriousness over the sustainability and longevity of the compromise that grounded the original effort by countries like Brazil in reaching out to Africa in the first place. If such measure of confidence evaporates, then previous gains quickly turn meaningless or, at the very least, end up diminished in the broader context of evaluating who to partner with in years ahead. The graphic representation of the different components of this relational spectrum can be best illustrated by Fig. 1. But if reliability is indeed paramount, it is also possible to make the case that Brazil taking advantage from opportunities that it was unexpectedly presented with or filling in the void that a competitor for similar space used to withhold meant very little for its long-standing credentials in the continent. Backstage support for ECOWAS during the crisis in Guinea-Bissau, for instance, proved hardly consistent in years to come as the inexistence of further high-level meetings between the two sides came to evidence. Even Brazilian diplomats recognized that their all-out support did not produce tangible dividends in terms of what they had originally envisioned their role to be on the ground: “It was very difficult to continue compacting with successive blows: 2009, 2010, 2012. So, it was necessary, perhaps, to send a stronger message. ‘This way we are not going to come to a good term’. So, I think that the position adopted by Brazil, correctly, naturally affected our project. It affected perhaps a little the relative position that Brazil had as a great facilitator, as a provider of cooperation. But it left a clear message that Brazil wanted

More material

More reliable

capabilities

commitments Opportunitytaking

Gap-filling

Less material

Less reliable

capabilities

commitments

Fig. 1  Spectrum of relational engagement between Brazil  and Africa. (Source: elaborated by the author)

38

P. Seabra

Guinea-Bissau on a very clear, defined democratic path”.18 The bulk of bilateral cooperation efforts remained unexecuted, and the possibility of Brazil becoming a central SSR player on the ground was also indefinitely postponed. Overall, “things did not work that well. We never questioned the final conclusions, yet we always ended up signing them”.19 Likewise, all-in support for Equatorial Guinea’s adhesion ended up equalling to nothing short than a new set of blocked dynamics as the institutional paralysis within the CPLP afterwards soon demonstrated (Gomes 2017). Ultimately, “I think we all embarked together on that decision of including Equatorial Guinea and have now to all contribute so that Equatorial Guinea can fulfil all those commitments. (…) Hence, I think it is still too early to lose hope that Equatorial Guinea will not meet all its commitments. I think we never expected, no member state expected that such an evolution would be achieved from night to day, it is something that will take some time”.20 In both cases, an inability to adequately follow through essentially doomed any kind of enduring rewards that might have been originally perceived as in reach for a country like Brazil. Instead of substantiating its African credentials, both cases ended up denting Brazil’s further aspirations of a reputational spillover to other nearby partners and subregions. Meanwhile, the usefulness of this relational mechanism is not solely exhausted in revisiting past foreign policy decisions or events. It also allows to pinpoint possible entry points through which Brazil can potentially reclaim some initiative of its own, if the current political and economic outlook were to improve once more. When confronted with a growing Chinese presence in Africa, for instance, possible pathways of choice become clearer. Depending on whether China incites unexpected backlash at a local level or is forced to deprioritize certain partners due to international predicaments, Brazil might find itself again in a position to either take advantage of the fluctuating situation or make good use of suddenly existing room for influence. In any of those cases, however, it will still be required to display sizeable material capabilities to back up new initiatives as well as to showcase more enduring commitments towards its respective African partners, if it is to find more success than previous endeavours.

7  Conclusion By revisiting the track record of Brazilian-African contemporary relations and casting them under the evolving competing dynamics between Brazil and Portugal, the net gains of the former’s ambitions can be best reinterpreted. Overall, there is

 Oral history interview with former Brazilian ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, Jorge Geraldo Kadri, 34. 19  Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 1, Brasília, 12 June 2013. 20  Interview with Brazilian senior diplomat no. 2, Brasília, 8 December 2017. 18

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

39

nothing fundamentally wrong in benefiting from outside opportunities and occupying the space left void by other countries. In itself, it can become a useful strategy to pierce through the limitations and constrains of a restrictive international system. However, if the debate over Brazil and Africa is keen on going from surge to downturn and beyond, then the emphasis should be more clearly set on how reactions trigger appropriate actions; not that Brazil should be exclusively perceived as a passive actor but rather as one contingent to what invariably happens in its surroundings. Instead of expecting Brazil to be a natural partner to Africa simply owing to a rhetoric of the past grounded in inevitability, Brazil should be seen under a more context-driven light, bound by the push-and-pull dynamics from other actors. It might not do much for national expectations, and it might even be perceived as an excessively opportunistic narrative, but it will certainly comprise a far more realistic approach. Either the grounds of what was supposedly achieved in this area in the last few years start to be questioned or a sense of deep disenchantment that regularly accompanies any boost in Brazilian-African relation will invariably return once more. Acknowledgements  The author would like to thank the support granted by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under grant SFRH/BPD/116700/2016.

References Abdenur, Adriana Erthal. 2018. Brazil-Africa relations: From boom to bust. In Africa and the world: Bilateral and multilateral international diplomacy, ed. Dawn Nagar and Charles Mutasa, 189–208. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Carvalho, Thiago. 2016. Identidade de Ânimos, Diferença de Propósitos As Relações entre Portugal e o Brasil (1974 – 1985). PhD dissertation, Lisbon: ISCTE-IUL. Carvalho, Clara. 2018. Africa and Portugal. In Africa and the world: Bilateral and multilateral international diplomacy, ed. Dawn Nagar and Charles Mutasa, 143–165. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Cervo, Amado Luiz, and Antonio Carlos Lessa. 2014. O declínio: inserção internacional do Brasil (2011–-2014). Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 57 (2): 133–151. Dávila, Jerry. 2010. Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the challenge of African decolonization, 1950–1980. Durham: Duke University Press. Dye, Barnaby Joseph, and Mathias Alencastro. 2020. Debunking Brazilian exceptionalism in its Africa relations: Evidence from Angola and Tanzania. Global Society. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13600826.2020.1722617. Embaló, Birgit. 2012. Civil–military relations and political order in Guinea-Bissau. Journal of Modern African Studies 50 (2): 253–281. Fonseca, Carmen. 2010. Intenções versus desempenho: o Brasil na política externa portuguesa (1976-2007). Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (2): 49–69. Gama, Jaime. 1985. Política Externa Portuguesa (1983–1985) – Selecção de Discursos e Entrevistas do Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros. Lisbon: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros. Gomes, Hélder. 2017. A CPLP após a entrada na Guiné-Equatorial. MA thesis, Lisbon: ISCTE-IUL.

40

P. Seabra

Gray, Kevin, and Craig Murphy. 2014. Rising Powers and the Future of Global Governance. London/New York: Routledge. Herpolsheimer, Jens. 2019. The finances of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP). In The finances of regional organisations in the Global South: Follow the money, ed. Ulf Engel and Frank Mattheis, 35–50. London: Routlege. Hewitt, W. E., Sean Burges, and Inês Gomes. 2017. The Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa at 20 years: An impact assessment. South African Journal of International Affairs 24(3): 291–309. MacQueen, Norrie. 2003. A Community of Illusions? Portugal, the CPLP and peacemaking in Guiné-Bissau. International Peacekeeping 10 (2): 2–26. Monteiro, António. 1996. A Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa. Nação e Defesa 77: 49–62. Monteiro, Fábio. 2014. A CPLP esteve para ruir devido à entrada da Guiné Equatorial. Observador, July 23. https://observador.pt/especiais/cplp-esteve-para-ruir-devido-entrada-da-guine-equatorial/. Accessed 20 January 2020. Nel, Philip. 2011. Redistribution and recognition: What emerging regional powers want. Review of International Studies 36 (4): 951–974. Reis, Bruno Cardoso, and Pedro Aires de Oliveira. 2018. The power and limits of cultural myths in Portugal's search for a post-Imperial role. The International History Review 40 (3): 631–653. Ribeiro, Nuno. 2014. Como Obiang isolou Portugal e fez xeque-mate em Fevereiro. Público, July 6. https://www.publico.pt/2014/07/06/mundo/noticia/obiang-isolou-portugal-e-fez-xequemate-em-fevereiro-1661688. Accessed 29 January 2020. Sá, Ana Lúcia. 2016. Guiné-Equatorial e CPLP: desafios ao futuro da Lusofonia. Anuário Janus 2015–2016: 155–157. Santos, Camila dos, Maíra Siman, and Marta Fernández. 2019. Two brazils’: Renegotiating Subalternity through south-south cooperation in Angola. Brazilian Political Science Review 13 (1): online. Santos, Luis António. 2003. Portugal and the CPLP: heightened expectations, unfounded disillusions. In The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonization, ed. Stewart Lloyd-Jones and António Costa Pinto, 67-81. Bristol: Intellect. Saraiva, José Flávio Sombra. 2010. The new Africa and Brazil in the Lula era: The rebirth of Brazilian Atlantic policy. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (Special Edition): 169–182. Seabra, Pedro. 2014. A case of unmet expectations: Portugal and the South Atlantic. Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences 13 (3): 331–346. ———. 2019. Um produto de tempos passados? Portugal e África no domínio politico-diplomático. In Política Externa Portuguesa e África: Tendências e Temas Contemporâneos, ed. António Raimundo, 73–99. Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Internacionais ISCTE-IUL. Seabra, Pedro, and Adriana Erthal Abdenur. 2018. Age of choice or diversification? Brazil, Portugal, and capacity-building in the Angolan armed forces. African Security 11 (3): 252–273. Seibert, Gerhard, and Paulo Visentini. 2019. Brazil-Africa relations: Historical dimensions and contemporary engagements, from the 1960s to the present. Suffolk: James Currey. Selcher, Wayne A. 1976. Brazilian relations with Portuguese Africa in the context of the elusive “Luso-Brazilian community”. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 18 (1): 25–58. Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula da. 2003. Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, na cerimônia de inauguração da Embaixada do Brasil na República Democrática de São Tome e Príncipe – São Tomé, 2 de Novembro de 2003. Brasília: Presidência da República/Secretaria de Imprensa. Soares de Oliveira, Ricardo. 2005. Sobre as Relações entre Portugal e Angola ao fim de Trinta Anos: Um Ensaio Crítico. Relações Internacionais 8: 55–72. Stolte, Christina. 2015. Brazil’s Africa strategy: Role conception and the drive for international status. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

From Opportunity Seeking to Gap Filling: Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa

41

Uchoa, Pablo. 2010. Amorim defende relação com Guiné-Equatorial: ‘Negócios são negócios’. BBC Brasil, July 5. http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2010/07/100705_amorim_ guine_pu_aw.sht ml. Accessed 20 January 2020. Victor, Fabio, and Mathias Alencastro. 2018. Intervenção no Rio Cancela Missão Militar do Brasil na África. Revista Piauí, April 18. https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/intervencao-no-rio-cancelamissao-militar-do-brasil-na-africa/. Accessed 29 January 2020. Visentini, Paulo. 2010. Cooperação Sul-Sul, Diplomacia de Prestígio ou Imperialismo “soft”? As relações Brasil-África do Governo Lula. Século XXI: Revista de Relações Internacionais 1 (1): 65–84. White, Lyal. 2010. Understanding Brazil’s new drive for Africa. South African Journal of International Affairs 23 (2): 221–242. Zanini, Fabio. 2017. Euforia e Fracasso do Brasil Grande: Política Externa e Multinacionais Brasileiras na Era Lula. São Paulo: Editora Contexto.

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018) Adriana Schor

1  Introduction Large trade flows between countries are correlated with other aspects of economic, social and political integration. It is hard to find countries that have tight political relations without having at the same time high levels of commerce. Social ties are also correlated with trade and investments. Flows of goods, services, capital, people, knowledge and culture tend to go together when not restricted by public policies. Trade between Brazil and Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries boomed in the first years of the twenty-first century. Was it a reflex of the deeper political and social integration? Did it lead to a path of deeper economic and political integration? Is the optimism about Brazil-Africa relations finally paying off? During the first decade of the century, Brazilian exports grew more than 10% per year on average. It was a huge increase from the previous decade, and some predicted that Brazil was finally integrating into the world economy (e.g. Stuenkel 2017). Brazil is historically a very closed economy, and only after the 1990s, there was some effort in opening up to international trade. In 1990, according to the World Bank data (World Bank 2020), Brazil’s openness to trade – measured by the sum of total imports and exports as share to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)  – was around 15% of GDP. This was the result of a long period during which the country’s development strategy was heavily based on import substitution. Other developing countries, however, had already opened their economies to international trade. Chile, for example, had a trade-to-GDP share of more than 60%. Mexico had an index of 38%. The World Bank calculates that, in 1990, the index for the ‘world’ was close to 39%. Brazilian economy was not open to international trade by any comparison. Brazil experienced a period of trade liberalisation with declining A. Schor (*) University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_4

43

44

A. Schor

import tariffs in the 1990s, but t­rade-­to-­GDP share stayed below 20% until the 2000s.1 The real change came in the beginning of the century. Trade flow as a share of the GDP went to close to 30% in just a few years. In the 2000–2010 period, Brazilian exports increased fourfold, from around US$55 billion per year to more than US$200 billion annually. In the same period, exports from Brazil to SSA showed an astonishing 25% increase per year from 2000 to 2010.2 Brazilian exports boomed, but Brazilian exports to SSA skyrocketed. Brazilian imports from these countries increased alongside exports. During the 2000–2004 period, imports grew by almost 39% per year on average. From 2005 to 2014, the average annual growth rate of Brazilian imports from SSA was lower, around 17%, but still experienced a healthy dynamic. However, from 2015 to 2018, Brazilian imports declined. Imports from SSA in 2018 experienced a steep drop, a hefty 77% decline from the total value of 2014 imports. Brazilian imports from SSA countries ended the second decade of the century (last data from 2018) two and a half times higher than they started (year 2000). But it is a small increase compared to what was achieved in the first decade and a half. From 2000 to 2014, Brazilian imports from the SSA countries managed to increase more than tenfold. Exports from Brazil to these countries faced a similar downward trend from 2010 to 2018, but with a much less strong decline. Comparing 2000 to 2018, there was a fivefold increase in annual exports. Figure 1 shows annual data of total Brazilian exports to and imports from SSA countries. From a relatively balanced trade from 2000 to 2005, Brazil experienced a trade deficit with these countries from 2006 to 2015. Imports increased continually – except for 2009 – from 2000 to 2014. Imports amounted to US$1.2 billion in 2000 and to more than to US$12 billion in 2014. Exports, on the other hand, increased less sharply, from less than US$1 billion in 2000 to almost US$7 billion in 2012 when it peaked. Brazilian exports to SSA started decreasing in 2013 and stabilised around US$4 billion between 2015 and 2018. The drop of imports from 2014 was much more severe. In just 2 years (2014–2016), imports from SSA countries decreased from US$12 billion to US$2 billion. What drove this huge trade increase between Brazil and Africa? Why was it so ephemeral? What does it say about the future of Brazil-Africa trade relations? Bearing these inquiries in mind, this chapter examines trade data3 from 2000 to 2018 to offer some insights and evidence that can allow to better understand the relationship between Brazil and SSA countries in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.  See Schor (2004) for a brief description of the trade liberalisation in the 1990s in Brazil.  Data from the United Nations Comtrade. 3  The main source of trade data used in this chapter is from the UN Comtrade database. It is a repository of official international trade statistics which contains disaggregated data for most countries for a long time period. In order to increase data consistency, it was used wherever possible data reported from Brazil – that is, Brazilian imports from SSA countries instead of exports from SSA countries to Brazil. Some data were also collected from the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) at the World Bank. The WITS platform offers some extremely useful aggregated trade statistics. 1 2

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)

45

Fig. 1  Brazilian trade with Sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: Comtrade)

2  Exploring the Causes for Trade Growth One explanation for the observed trade increase between Brazil and the SSA countries is the income increase experienced by these countries during this period. Commodity prices, the biggest share of exports of all these countries, soared in those years and led to higher income, which was then spent also in imported goods. In this case, consumption and investment growth could have been the main driver of the increased trade. However, it could be the case that most part of the increase of trade observed was only a reflex of higher commodity prices. It is possible that there was no increase in trade volume, only in prices. In this scenario, we cannot say that there was in fact a real increase of trade between Brazil and Africa. In order to disentangle these effects, one must look to commodity prices and the pattern of trade between those countries. As can be seen in Fig. 2, the evolution of Brazilian imports from SSA countries seems to follow closely the price of oil in the international market. All the import increase, and its variation, are closely related to changes in oil prices. It could be the case that higher oil (and other commodity) prices led to higher income, and this was in fact the main driver of risen imports. The 2009 import decrease seems to be fully explained by the sharp decline of the price of oil. The import reduction after 2014, however, seems to be related not only to the oil price but also to the economic downturn of the Brazilian economy in this period. However, as seen in Fig. 3, the pattern of Brazilian imports from SSA countries shows clearly that most of them are composed of fuels. Not only fuel is the main

46

A. Schor

Fig. 2  Brazilian imports from Sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: Comtrade and IMF)

imported good, but it also accounts for more than 70% of total imports since 2000. All the other groups of imported goods from SSA have their share reduced from 2000 to 2015. As oil prices4 increased, fuel imports peaked to more than 90% of the total value of Brazilian imports from SSA. It seems that higher imports were just due to higher prices. Based on this evidence, we might rush to the conclusion that most of what seemed to be an increase in economic ties between Brazil and the SSA countries was in fact just an optical illusion. It could be the case that all trade increase in the first two decades of the century was only due to price increase. It would be a discouraging result for Brazil-Africa relations. Brazilian imports, however, do not tell the whole story about trade relations. From the import side, Brazil and SSA trade boils down to oil trade, but exports from Brazil to SSA countries seem to be much more diversified. Figure 4 organises World Bank data which aggregate Brazilian exports in eight groups  – Food, Transportation, Machinery and Electrical, Chemicals, Plastic or Rubber, Animal, Metals and Others  – to the world and to only SSA countries. Different from the pattern of imports, Brazilian exports to SSA are similar to the pattern of its exports to the rest of the world. The figure shows data from 2015, but almost identical figures arise when data from any year of the 2000–2015 period is used.

 Oil price data are from the International Monetary Fund Primary Commodity Prices database.

4

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)

47

Fig. 3  Brazilian imports from Sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: WITS World Bank)

Fig. 4  Brazilian exports in 2015. (Source: WITS World Bank)

Food products were the main imports of SSA countries from Brazil with more than 35% of total imports in 2015. This is a much higher percentage than the average Brazilian exports to the rest of the world (around 10%), but it could be explained by the difference of import pattern of Africa compared to the import pattern of the rest of the world. Brazil exports more minerals and vegetables (soya mostly) to the rest of the world than to Africa. But the most interesting result of this analysis is that the share of ‘Transportation’, ‘Machinery and Electronic’ and ‘Plastic or Rubber’ in Brazil’s exports to Africa and to the rest of the world is very much similar. These

48

A. Schor

Fig. 5  Brazilian exports to Sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: WITS World Bank)

products are usually those classified as more technology-intensive and have more stable prices than commodities (as ‘Food’ and ‘Minerals’ usually are). These are the kind of exports that drive productivity increase and economic growth. From the African side, these are imports that induce interdependence and common business cycles. This is the kind of trade which supports a dense net of business relations seen when countries are economically integrated. If Brazil and African countries did develop a much closer and deeper relationship in the beginning of the twenty-first century, this is the kind of evidence one would be looking for. Figure 5 presents the same data, but only for exports to SSA countries and for four evenly spaced years during the period of our analysis – 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015. It shows that not only did exports increase by large numbers in the first decades of the century but also that a relatively diversified bundle of products was maintained. This could be evidence that the commodity price increase led to income growth in Africa, which in turn was spent in consumption of imported Brazilian goods.

3  Depth of Trade Integration In order to better understand the dynamics of Brazilian exports to SSA, export flows are decomposed by country of destination and by product. This enables us to see how deep (or not) trade integration between Africa and Brazil is.

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)

49

Fig. 6  Brazilian main trade partners in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Source: Comtrade)

First, exports from Brazil to SSA are decomposed by country of destination. Using data from the UN Comtrade databank, the proportion of Brazilian exports to each SSA country in total Brazilian exports to SSA countries was calculated. As Fig. 6 shows, the four more important trade partners were Angola, Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana. Not surprisingly, these are the biggest economies in SSA. According to the World Bank data, these four countries accounted for more than 55% of total SSA GDP during the 2000–2018 period. Together, they accounted for around 80% of Brazilian exports to the region in 2000. That percentage was much higher than the economic weight of these countries, considering their share in total SSA GDP. It seems that Brazilian exports are more concentrated than it would be expected. From 2009 onwards, data show a progressive reduction of the importance of these countries in total Brazilian exports to SSA. In 2018, the four countries amounted to around 65% of total Brazilian exports to the region. Considering South Africa, Nigeria and Angola (Ghana never reached more than 5%), they account for 80% of Brazilian total exports to SSA countries in 2000 and more than 60% in 2018. Thus, when talking about Brazil trading with SSA, we are in fact talking about Brazil trading with only three amongst all Sub-Saharan countries. When we then proceed to analyse trade flows between Brazil and these three countries, the lack of product diversification becomes evident. Comtrade data reports Brazilian products exported to these countries for the 2000–2018 period. We then ordered by value the products categorised in 99 chapters (two-digit level) of the Harmonized System (HS). Angola imported US$106 million from Brazil in 2000. In 2018, it reached US$458 million, a more than fourfold increase. However, most of this increase is

50

A. Schor

concentrated in just a few products. Brazilian exports of meat (HS Chapter 2: Meat and Edible Meat Offal), which comprised 17% of total exports in 2000, increased by 735% from US$18 million to US$150 million. In 2018, it represented a third of total exports from Brazil to Angola. Sugar (HS Chapter 17: Sugars and Sugar Confectionery) was the second most important export, both in 2000 and 2018. Total sugar exports increased by 690%, from US$13 million to US$105 million. From the US$358 million total increase of Brazilian exports to Angola from 2000 to 2018, US$224 million (or 60%) was due to two single products, meat and sugar. A similar pattern is seen when analysing Brazilian exports to Nigeria. Sugar (HS Chapter 17: Sugars and Sugar Confectionery) was the most exported commodity from Brazil to Nigeria. It accounted for 45% of total exports in 2000 and 58% in 2018. Most of the US$421 million export increase from 2000 to 2018 (65%) was due to sugar. It is important to note, however, a tenfold increase in meat (HS Chapter 2: Meat and Edible Meat Offal) exports. It was a relatively unimportant product in 2000 (7% of total exports) but in 2018 represented almost 30% of total exports from Brazil to the country. South Africa, the most important Brazilian trade partner in SSA, shows a brighter picture. In 2000, 45% of Brazilian exports to the country were of machinery, electrical equipment, and vehicles (HS Chapter 84: Nuclear Reactors, Boilers, Machinery and Mechanical Appliances; HS Chapter 85: Electrical Machinery and Equipment and Parts Thereof; HS Chapter 87: Vehicles). In 2018, despite the relative decline, these three products were responsible for one-third of total exports from Brazil. It is a more diversified bundle of exports compared to Nigeria and Angola. The volume of exports experienced a fourfold increase in those 18 years, from US$302 million to US$1.4 billion. Meat (HS Chapter 2: Meat and Edible Meat Offal) and sugar (HS Chapter 17: Sugars and Sugar Confectionery) were also important products, especially after an almost 30-fold increase in meat exports which in 2018 accounted for 20% of total Brazilian exports to the country. The decomposition of Brazilian trade with SSA shows a very concentrated flow, considering both countries and products. As shown above, Brazilian imports from Angola and Nigeria involved mostly fuel. Brazilian exports were concentrated in these two countries and South Africa. Most of it consisted of sugar and meat. This kind of evidence leads us to the conclusion that trade integration between Brazil and Sub-Saharan countries was extremely shallow. Despite the huge increase, trade is still very concentrated and cannot be equated with a higher integration in 2018 compared to 2000.

4  Politics of Trade In his first official visit to the continent in 2003, President Lula was accompanied by 160 businessmen (Krakovics 2003). It was a clear sign that, even if Brazil was going to Africa for political reasons, it was also in order to make business.

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)

51

Trade promotion is considered a useful tool to increase business offshore. Copeland (2008), for instance, offers an interesting survey on theoretical and empirical issues in this regard. Firms usually face high sunk costs, especially informational costs, when approaching a new export market. Governments use trade promotion instruments to circumvent these market failures and help firms to expand into foreign markets. Increasing trade is considered a first step into developing economic integration between countries, which could then be followed by direct investments. During Lula’s presidency (2003–2010), there were some efforts in this direction. The diversification of trade partners, with emphasis on ‘southern’ countries, was part of the Brazilian diplomatic strategy since the first years of the Lula’s government (Amorim 2010).5 It could be the case that the exponential increase in meat exports to SSA countries after 2003 was due to trade promotion from Brazilian government. It could be an evidence that the politics of trade actually worked.6 As mentioned above, trade integration between Brazil and Sub-Saharan countries is still very shallow. Even more so when accounting for historical trends, previous envisioned trade opportunities tended to often shrank in light of a slow industrialisation process in Africa, political instability throughout the continent and Brazil’s own economic woes. For instance, if in 1980, Africa amounted to 8.4% of total Brazilian exports, in the next decade, such flows were brought to near stagnation (de Santana 2003). Can political efforts make a difference and contribute to a healthier trade relationship? Politics of trade is recognizably a process very much influenced by business interests from the countries involved. Without the push from exporters, it is most likely that protectionist domestic pressure groups would be able to delay and deflate trade agreement talks. The Brazilian meat export sector could have led trade conversations in order to open borders and reduce trade barriers between Brazil and SSA countries. In 2018, South Africa and Nigeria imported 10 times more meat from Brazil than in 2000. In Angola, this increase was eightfold. This is a sector that clearly would have benefited from a higher integration of these economies. The only official trade agreement Brazil and SSA countries took part in during this period was the Mercosur-SACU Trade Agreement. However, most analysts considered tariff concessions disappointing (Pereira 2006; da Motta Veiga 2013). Not only was the range of products thin, but also most concessions were small. 5  Ribeiro (2007) presents a series of interviews with Brazilian diplomats and businessmen, which shows the diplomatic effort in promoting Brazilian firms and trade with several African countries. In one of these interviews (197), a Brazilian diplomat describes a trip to Botswana where they were accompanied by several Brazilian businessmen eager to engage with Botswanan businessmen. He cites two important Brazilian meat producers. 6  Vieira (2014) finds that Brazilian trade did not respond to diplomatic efforts in the 1992–2008 period, including the increase of export share to Global South partners as the SSA countries. The author, however, considers only signed agreements as a proxy for diplomatic effort. Here, the argument concerns trade promotion instruments and not trade agreements which, as discussed below, did in fact probably have small, if any, impact on trade value.

52

A. Schor

Some products like vehicles that Brazil exports to South Africa were absent from the agreement. Why did not Brazilian exporters push for a more aggressive openness to trade? One reason could be the fact that, although meat exports to SSA increased substantially, it is still too small compared to total exports from the sector. Brazilian meat exports to Angola, Nigeria and South Africa was still no more than 4% of total meat exports from Brazil in 2018. There are other markets more important for this sector which could have a much higher payoff stemming from the involvement in the politics of trade. The same holds for the sugar sector. Despite being one of the most traded products between Brazil and these countries, not only it varies widely annually, but it also did not surpass 10% of total sugar exports from Brazil. Engaging in trade talks with Sub-Saharan Africa is just not worth the effort for Brazilian exporters.7 The same holds true for these three SSA countries. Angola buys a lot of Brazilian sugar. However, not only the amount bought from Brazil varies significantly from year to year (75% of total sugar imports in 2018 compared to 35% in 2017, just to give an example), but also, sugar is not an important product in the import bundle (it represented around 1% of total Angolan imports in 2018). Nigeria imports 80% of its sugar from Brazil, but it represented just less than 2% of its total imports in 2018. A similar pattern is observed when analysing the meat sector. Brazil seems to be not an important enough partner to make importers of these products to bear the political cost to push for trade talks in order to reduce barriers to trade. A special agreement on vehicle trade between Brazil and South Africa was ventilated when it was clear that Mercosur-SACU trade agreement would not include vehicles. However, it faded since then. This is nevertheless not surprising. Imports of Brazilian vehicles represent less than 1% of total vehicle imports from South Africa. From the Brazilian side, exports for South Africa represent less than 2% of total Brazilian vehicle exports. Even when considering trade in fuels, the main imported product by Brazil from SSA countries, it seems that neither is Brazil an important trade partner for SSA countries nor are these countries important trade partners for Brazil. Less than 10% of total Brazilian fuel imports are from these countries. It represented less than 1% of total fuel exports from Angola and 6% of total fuel exports from Nigeria in 2018. Thus, although trade promotion might have had an impact on trade volume in these first two decades of the century (meat is a very positive example), it seems that it was insufficient to drive Brazilian trade engagement with Sub-Saharan Africa towards a deeper integration. 7  This seems especially true if the diplomatic efforts in promoting trade were responsible for the impressive increase in trade experienced by the meat sector. There seems to be still other instruments to be used by firms that involve less political costs and lead to rapid gains. Formal trade negotiations are costly and time-consuming.

Brazilian Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa (2000–2018)

53

5  Concluding Remarks Trade between Brazil and Sub-Saharan African countries increased sharply in the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, the second decade brought a decline of this trade increase. Since most trade is composed of commodities, the increase in the first years and the subsequent decline seem to be just part of another story of a traditional commodity cycle of boom and burst. Due to the small value and lack of product diversification, it is most likely that Brazil and Sub-Saharan Africa trade integration will never be deep enough to lead to more profound economic, political, social and cultural integration. Other means are necessary to foster closer relations between Brazil and Africa. Moreover, if provisional numbers for more recent years are to go by (Comex do Brasil 2020), the outlook does not look particularly rosy in this regard. There is, however, still room for some optimism regarding the future of Brazil-­ Africa trade relationship. The rapid and solid increase in the share of SSA imports of meat from Brazil during the period under analysis, apparently after a push from governmental trade promotion, is an evidence that political will can have a future impact on trade relations. There are common interests and some opportunities to increase trade integration. South Africa, in particular, could be a much closer trade partner to Brazil. Trade between these countries is still much lower than expected, and barriers to trade are still high. There is some room for improvements and for a brighter story in the future.

References Amorim, Celso. 2010. Brazilian foreign policy under President Lula (2003–2010): An overview. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 53 (Special Issue): 214–240. Comex do Brasil. 2020. Brasil vira as costas para a África, fluxo de comércio despenca e China ocupa espaços deixado pelo país. COMEX do Brasil, June 15. https://www.comexdobrasil. com/brasil-vira-as-costas-para-a-africa-fluxo-de-comercio-despenca-e-china-ocupa-espacosdeixado-pelo-pais/. Accessed 15 May 2020. Copeland, Brian R. 2008. Is there a case for trade and investment promotion policy? In Trade policy research 2007, ed. Dan Ciuriak, 1–64. Ottawa: Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. da Motta Veiga, Pedro. 2013. A África na agenda econômica do Brasil: comércio, investimentos e cooperação. Revista Brasileira de Comércio Exterior 116: 4–19. de Santana, Ivo. 2003. Notas e comentários sobre a dinâmica do comércio Brasil-África nas décadas de 1970 a 1990. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 46 (2): 113–136. International Monetary Fund. Primary commodity database. www.imf.org/en/Research/commodity-prices. Accessed 15 May 2020. Krakovics, Fernanda. 2003. Lula assinará acordos na África de R$ 500 mi até o final de 2006. Folha de São Paulo, October 31. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u54949. shtml. Accessed 15 May 2020. Pereira, Lia Valls. 2006. Os acordos do Mercosul com a Índia e SACU. Conjuntura Econômica 60 (4): 42–43.

54

A. Schor

Ribeiro, Claudio Oliveira. 2007. Relações político-comerciais Brasil-África (1985–2006). PhD dissertation, São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Schor, Adriana. 2004. Heterogeneous productivity response to tariff reduction. Evidence from Brazilian manufacturing firms. Journal of Development Economics 75 (2): 373–396. Stuenkel, Oliver. 2017. BRICS e o futuro da ordem mundial. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. United Nations Comtrade. United Nations international trade statistics database. www.comtrade. un.org. Accessed 15 May 2020. Vieira, Vinícius Rodrigues. 2014. Is politics behind trade? The impact of international trends and diplomatic action on Brazil’s exports during globalisation. Bulletin of Latin American Research 33 (2): 140–157. World Bank. 2020. World Bank open data. www.data.worldbank.org. Accessed 15 May 2020.

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola Mathias Alencastro

1  Introduction It is a matter of agreement that the charismatic leadership of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula henceforth), who governed Brazil between 2003 and 2010, played a decisive role in the revival of Brazil-Africa relations in the twenty-first century (Cason and Power 2009). He personally vouched for the promise of Brazil to “rediscover” Africa (Rangel 2003). It was thought that, under the aura of Lula, the soft power of Brazil in Africa had never been stronger. Brazilian and African commentators alike described him as one of the most popular leaders in the continent.1 His involvement lasted beyond his presidential mandate (2003–2011). Via the Africa initiative of the Lula Institute, the former president remained active in all fronts, from attending international seminars about fight against hunger to negotiating with African state leaders on behalf of Brazilian companies.2 From 2015 onwards, the activities of Lula in Africa became the object of intense speculation. The Brazilian media began to portray  his alleged collusion with big companies in Africa, and especially in Angola, as one of the most controversial aspects of his career.3 The frequent mentions of African politicians in the delações

 See, for instance, “homme le plus populaire de la planète,” Jeune Afrique, 21 April 2009.  Created in 2011, the Lula Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the agenda of the former president. Since the beginning, the Africa Initiative was counted among the most well-funded and dynamic sections of the institution. 3  In the most comprehensive public search engine dedicated to the Car Wash investigation, created by legal magazine Jota, “Angola” has more mentions than any other country. See http://www.jota. info/lavajota/. 1 2

M. Alencastro (*) Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), São Paulo, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_5

55

56

M. Alencastro

premiadas (the Brazilian adaptation of plea bargain) of private sector managers in the context of the Car Wash (Lava Jato) investigation greatly contributed to this narrative.4 Opposition politicians caricatured “Lula in Africa” as a police novel. In a response to a question about business deals overseas at the Foreign Relations and National Defense Commission of the Congress in March 2019, Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo said he was ashamed Brazil “exported corruption”.5 Lula is not the first president of a foreign power accused of trading on behalf of national companies in Africa, to the point that public and private agendas became hardly distinguishable. Scholars point out that this is actually a feature of foreign policy in the early 2000s, when high-profile politicians such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, both contemporaries of Lula, stood out for their tendency to align their agendas with the demands of big business (Melly and Darracq 2013; Grant 2000). All these leaders pursued in their career paths after politics, via a complex system of relationships that opened up for them (Musella 2018). The economic diplomacy literature also notes that the influence of big business in foreign policy, a key feature of industrialized countries, has increased significantly in the developing world, in a process often linked to the substantial rise of commodity prices of the early 2000s (Baru 2009; Valsamakis 2012). The case of Lula’s economic diplomacy in Africa must be analyzed in this context. The Brazilian president was present in every negotiations of major Brazilian corporations in the continent. In Mozambique, Lula, in alliance with the Brazilian diplomatic body, decisively helped Vale secure the lucrative coal mining concession in Tete province. Lula was also personally involved in the investment of Andrade Gutierrez in Tanzania and in the attempt of Vale to secure the control of a competitive yet controversial bauxite mine in Conakry, Guinea. However, the case of Odebrecht in Angola stands out for three reasons. First, the company had a strategic position in Angola before Lula arrived in power. This considerably altered power dynamics. Second, Odebrecht benefited from a majority of Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) loans to Angola. Third and finally, Lula became involved in local politics and acted as an ally of the regime of José Eduardo dos Santos.6 The chapter looks at how Lula and Odebrecht worked together to expand the web of Brazilian interests in Angola and the role of the Angolan government in this process. It argues that his personal leadership mattered but only to a certain level. Indeed, by the time Lula came to power, the Brazilian company had already developed a strong, and mutually beneficial, alliance with the Angolan government. That 4  The delação premiada is commonly translated to English as plea bargain, although there are differences between the two practices. 5  Public hearing of the Foreign Relations and National Defense Commission, 27 March 2019. 6  Whilst this chapter focuses exclusively on the case of Angola, Odebrecht was also active in several countries in Africa and Latin America during that period, from Mozambique to Panama and Argentina.

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

57

said, Odebrecht did enlist Lula to help with its attempt to remain competitive in Angola as China arrived in force. In the meantime, the Angolan government saw in the Brazilian politician, a global celebrity in the late 2000s and a skilful advocate of the democratic credentials of the regime. In the end, Lula helped giving a new dimension to an already existing alliance. In the process, the chapter provides an alternative to the view that Lula orchestrated Brazil’s drive to Africa, which is, among other things, at the heart of the Car Wash inquiry. After a brief discussion on Odebrecht and its relations with public power, the chapter proceeds in the following manner: the first section looks at the evolving meaning of Africa for Lula, from the years preceding his arrival in power to the end of his presidency. It argues that whilst Africa had been a central part of his international agenda for a decade, the newly minted president Lula lacked the knowledge and the means to organize a coherent business agenda. At that point, Odebrecht offered a “key in hands” approach to Angola, which would eventually become one the most exciting and visible aspects of the African agenda.7 The second section discusses the ways in which the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA – Movimento para a Libertação de Angola) recruited Lula and Odebrecht to help organize the 2012 elections, the last attempt of the regime, in power since 1975, and its leader, José Eduardo dos Santos, to renew its democratic promise. The final paragraphs of the section consider the position of the Angolan government in the Lula-Odebrecht relationship. It shows that, contrary to claims that African states are passive recipients of foreign investment, the Angolan government had a commanding position in the operations of Odebrecht in the country. The conclusion discusses the importance of this case study for Brazil-Africa relations more generally. The chapter draws on a different set of sources: first, a series of interviews conducted in Luanda, the capital of Angola, but also Saurimo, the provincial capital of Lunda Sul, near where Odebrecht operated the diamond mine concession Sociedade Mineira de Catoca (SMC). A second batch of interviews concerns Brazilian diplomats based in Brasília and political as well legal actors with an interest in Brazil-­ Africa relations in São Paulo. Second, the chapter draws on official documents from Odebrecht, such as the company’s annual reports, and documents produced by the Brazilian state organs on the operations of the BNDES, including, among others, the Senate. Finally, the chapter also uses the resources from the Car Wash investigations. It does not, however, take elements from plea bargains and depositions for face value. Most of the files from Lava Jato are used in triangulation with other oral, archival or even press sources. It must be noted that the chapter does not seek to cover the corruption mechanisms that may, or may not, have enabled the relationship between Lula, Odebrecht and Angola. These allegations have been discussed in a different paper (Alencastro 2018).

7  The expression “hands on,” a free translation of “chave na mão,” was used by a former executive of Odebrecht, in charge of liaising with the Brazilian government. Interview, Brasilia, 23 October 2017.

58

M. Alencastro

Before the chapter proceeds, it is important to provide a characterization of the company that will be the prism through which Brazil and Angola relations will be examined in this chapter. In line with the dominant tradition of international relations, the study of Brazil-Africa relations tends to revolve around institutional considerations. This chapter is part of a broader research project that seeks to shed light on the corporate actors involved in Brazilian foreign policy towards Africa.8 An analysis that places Odebrecht, or any corporation, at the centre of bilateral relations between countries presents its set of challenges (Coll 2012). Built to scrutinize concentrated power in the public sphere, the scholarship is much less equipped to cope with concentrated power in the private sphere. In Brazil and Angola, an array of scholars have looked at concentrated power in government, but only a few tried to get underneath the surface of decisions from companies. The fact that companies like Odebrecht are very closed systems, hard to access by scholars and journalists, does not explain everything. With a few exceptions, the scholarship never undertook the task laid out by Susan Strange in the 1990s, when she called for the revision of international relations in light of the emergence of corporation as truly political actors (Strange 1992). Founded in 1944, Odebrecht rose through the ranks of the Brazilian construction sector by building ties with the military dictatorship via Petrobras and Ernesto Geisel, who headed the oil public company for several years before taking over the presidency in 1974 (Campos 2014). Throughout that period, the company always nurtured a public and private discourse. It repeated the mantra that Odebrecht is an über rational company with strong ethical values based on the protestant culture so cherished by the German descent and founder Norberto Odebrecht. His decision to move the family from the southern state of Santa Catarina to Bahia is often presented as a tale of Brazilian modernization. The ethics of Norberto are compiled in a book supposed to set the standards of corporate governance (Odebrecht 1983). In parallel, Odebrecht cultivated in the backstage the reputation of “coziness,” as an executive put it to me. By that, he meant that “Odebrecht created an environment of safety and privacy for government officials, who could share their dreams and anguishes.” Other than distributing cash handouts to political leaders across the board, Odebrecht also looked after its allies and their families by paying for medical, college and even aesthetic expenses. The same executive, who spent most of the 2000s working with officials of the Brazilian government, claims that Odebrecht arranged for lifesaving medical treatment of leading MPLA officials in Rio de Janeiro throughout the 1990s.9

8  This article is part of the postdoctoral project “The African politics of Brazilian multinationals,” funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation. 9  Interview with Odebrecht employee in charge of liaising with political officials, São Paulo, 12 March 2018. Much of this information is corroborated by depositions pertaining to the Car Wash operation, of which at least one complaint involves Odebrecht and Angola. I consulted all these documents extensively and mention them whenever they are directly used as sources. However, I have prioritized information gathered from interviewees, some of which have contributed to the investigations with depositions and plea bargains.

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

59

The opportunity to work in Angola appeared in 1985, in a difficult moment for the company. As Brazil entered a long period of political and economic transition marked by uncontrolled inflation, Odebrecht approached the military regime for business ventures abroad. Advised by the Soviet Union, the Brazilian government directed the company to Angola. The same executive notes that senior Odebrecht officials enjoyed drawing parallels between the voyage of initiation of the Odebrecht family from Santa Catarina to Bahia and the journey across the South Atlantic between Salvador and Luanda.10 It was the first time that executives could test Odebrecht’s way of doing business abroad. Whilst in public Odebrecht promoted the humanitarian dimension of its investment in a war-torn country, in private, it immediately sought to create an atmosphere of complicity and trust with Angola’s president José Eduardo dos Santos. It was among the only non-oil companies to join the small team of trustworthy businessman (empresários de confiança) who had direct access to the presidential palace (Soares de Oliveira 2015). Although Odebrecht could always rely on funding from the Angolan state, it systematically requested financial resources from the Brazilian state to realize flagship infrastructure such as hydroelectric dams but also roads and public housing, as discussed later in this chapter. It was also in Angola that Vice President Emilio Odebrecht, the son of Norberto, took command of the nascent international branch of the company. Two decades later, foreign operations accounted for 55% of total revenues (Odebrecht 2015). Emilio took over as CEO in 1991, and the gradual transition of power to his son Marcelo Odebrecht came to a halt in 2015 when corruption scandals put an abrupt end on the company’s triumphal trajectory. In 2017, Odebrecht admitted to bribing civil servants from 11 different countries, including Angola, where the company allegedly paid as much as US$50 million in bribes to local officials. According to the US Department of Justice, this accounted for the “largest foreign bribery case in history” (Pressly 2018). Looking at Odebrecht in Angola allows a better understanding of its business model. The literature on oil companies and extractive companies generally underlines that multinational corporations are driven by the need to outlast governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, corporations were able to survive complex cycles such as decolonization, regime change and civil war (Soares de Oliveira 2007). As the numerous studies on French business interests in West Africa point out, regimes come and go, but corporations rarely move (Collombat and Servenay 2014). However, contrary to most of these companies, Odebrecht always seemed obsessed by the need to perpetuate allies in power. For Odebrecht seeks to establish durable partnerships with governments and to develop an infinite range of projects with them for decades all the whilst taking value out of them. The company is, in its essence, a parastatal at the service of different states.

10

 Idem.

60

M. Alencastro

2  Lula and Angola: A “Key in Hands” Operation In June 2010, the Angolan media rushed to cover the visit of president José Eduardo dos Santos to Brazil. On that occasion, president Lula repeated the mantra of a new era for “two great countries in development” and that “Brazil came to stay in Africa” (Silva 2010). A diplomat recalls this visit as particularly symbolical as “both leaders seemed at the height of their power”.11 Lula held the highest approval ever recorded for a Brazilian president, at around 80%. In the presidential elections scheduled for later that year, he was almost certain to elect his successor, the then Chief of Staff of the Presidency Dilma Rousseff. dos Santos, on the other hand, was getting praise for turning Angola into one of Africa’s most dynamic economies. A few months earlier, he had consolidated his grip over the regime further by approving a new constitution. The first decade of the century led many to believe that Angola and Brazil did have a “shared destiny”.12 The coincidence between the new oil discoveries in the South Atlantic and the political victory of sitting regimes represented the opportunity for a clean slate. What was new in relation to similar historical moments was the unprecedented sense of possibility, the favourable regional and global conjecture. These leaders, who did not hesitate to portray their respective societies as living in the shadow of external powers, claimed to finally have the political and financial means to realize their nation’s destiny. This accounted for one of the most unexpected aspects of the Lula presidency, for the president or the senior members of the Workers’ Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores) never imagined the partnership between Brazil and Angola evolving into a transatlantic alliance. The next paragraphs look at how Lula came to Angola and the role of Odebrecht in the process. Lula always believed to have an intuitive relationship with African leaders. He visited Nelson Mandela in 1994 to mark the beginning of his second presidential campaign. Throughout the 1990s, he tried to associate the PT’s struggle in Brazil with that of Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa – an efficient way to position the PT as the leader of the transition to democracy in Brazil and connect his trajectory with that of the foremost global leader of the last quarter of the century. But Lula’s interest for Africa went beyond political considerations. On the one hand, the continent was central to his signature policy project, the fight against hunger in Brazil. From its incipiency, the Bolsa Familia was conceived as a programme to promote Brazil’s soft power. On the other hand, the relation with African states was central to his promise of strengthening the position of African descendants in the Brazilian society. In the 1990s, Afro-Brazilian movements not only endorsed the PT’s decision to set Africa as a foreign policy priority but also played a key role in the formulation of the agenda (Dye and Alencastro 2020).  Interview with a diplomat who served in Angola, Brasília, 23 January 2016.  The idea of a shared destiny between Brazil and Africa, frequently used in diplomatic circles, originates in the historical literature on Afro-Brazilians (Risério 2007).

11 12

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

61

There were, however, several limitations when it came to the business side of the policy. Neither the PT nor the Brazilian state had the capacity to operationalize a coherent business agenda in Africa. PT leaders were fundamentally Latin Americanists with a European education. The personal and academic trajectory of Lula’s senior foreign policy advisor Marco Aurélio Garcia, who was intellectually formed by his experiences in Chile and France, was typical of the first generation of PT militants.13 The PT never had in hand what the French typically call a Monsieur Afrique, or a go to man for all African affairs. Likewise, the Itamaraty was not at its best shape when it came to articulating a coherent business agenda. The generation of diplomats that continued the work of Ítalo Zappa and Ovidio Andrade de Melo, who desively promoted Brazil’s interests in Africa in the 1970s, was mostly dedicated to the formation of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP  – Comunidade dos Países de Lingua Portuguesa), which then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso envisioned as the vehicle through which Brazil would carry relations with Portuguese-speaking African states (Melo 2009; Moreira Lima and Santos 2015). Traditionally, companies operated outside the sphere of the Itamaraty, which sought to keep a healthy distance from private agenda. Overall, the Brazilian state provided financial backing to Odebrecht, but had little influence over the company’s business strategy. In short, economic diplomacy was kept to a minimum.  In some occasions, however, Odebrecht did spearhead Brazilian diplomatic initiatives towards Angola.  The company lobbied Brazilian diplomats to help the MPLA secure a representation at the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1994, at a time when it was trying to rebrand itself into a western-friendly government.14 Odebrecht executives also advised Fernando Henrique Cardoso on how to act with regard to the civil conflict, in which Brazil was involved via the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM) (MacQueen 1998).15 When the PT came to power and sought to give a new dimension to Brazil’s presence in Africa, Odebrecht was ideally placed to offer a roadmap. PT-Odebrecht relations trace back to the strikes organized by the Single Union of Workers (CUT – Central Única dos Trabalhadores), the party’s union branch, in the petrochemical centre of Camaçari, where the company held key assets (Cabral and Oliveira 2017). The first controversy on the involvement of Odebrecht in the PT’s internal politics took place in 1995, when the press revealed that the company funded the presidential campaign of Lula the year before (Maklouf 2005; Secco 2011). By the time Lula was preparing his victorious campaign of 2002, the PT and Odebrecht had already established a working relationship, with Emilio Odebrecht negotiating specific measures pertaining to international business in exchange for electoral funding.  Marco Aurélio Garcia, who passed away in July 2017, was also interviewed for this research in October 2016. 14  The United States only recognized the MPLA as the official Angolan government in 1993. 15  Under UNAVEM 3 (1995–1997), the company, in a joint venture with Raytheon Technologies, entered a partnership with the United Nations for logistical support in all Angolan territory (Odebrecht 2014). 13

62

M. Alencastro

Hence, it quickly became evident that Angola was the perfect stage to mark the beginning of a new era. The country had just come out of almost three decades of non-stop conflict. It was bursting with oil rigs across the South Atlantic. Most importantly, Odebrecht was the most intimate partner of the local regime. In another key development, Emilio Odebrecht intermediated the meeting between Lula and dos Santos. The two developed a personal relationship that changed the nature of business diplomacy. In a gradual and steady process, all decisions regarding Brazil and Angola were concentrated in the hands of the two presidents, with Emilio Odebrecht acting as a moderating force. Whilst the verticalization of decision-making procedures allowed Odebrecht to fully deploy in Angola and occupy every imaginable space, it also posed institutional challenges. Diplomats note that the private sector started to intervene more consistently in foreign policy decisions in the 2000s, as Vale and Odebrecht expanded their overseas investments. These companies typically had more weight in negotiations with African states, where Brazilian foreign policy guidelines were less structured than in Latin American and Europe. However, diplomats are adamant that the domination of Odebrecht over all things Angola was off the charts: Odebrecht could influence Brazilian positions in countries where it held significant interests, such as Argentina or Peru. But the company was only one stakeholder among several. When it came to Angola, Odebrecht dominated the discussion. Nobody could match its knowledge of the ground and its capacity to delineate a clear strategy.16

Odebrecht officials, on the other hand, saw the productive partnership with the Lula government in Angola as a framework for other international operations. In order to allow for more coordination, the operation in Angola was incorporated into the Latin American office in the organizational map of the conglomerate (Alencastro 2020).17 Likewise, Lula drew on his experience with Odebrecht to encourage other CEOs of major Brazilian companies to develop a more aggressive presence in Africa. The case of Equatorial Guinea closely resembled that of Angola. In the small oil state of the Gulf of Guinea governed by what scholars describe as a family tyranny, a Brazilian construction company, OAS, headed by a former Odebrecht executive, assumed an outsized role in the local economy with the active support of the Lula government (Ministério Público Federal 2018). The Lula government also undertook important governance reforms that allowed corporations, and especially Odebrecht, to prosper abroad. Above all, he helped in unblocking one of the most resilient bureaucratic quarrels between the company and the Brazilian state: the expansion of  state-financed  construction  projects abroad. Since its arrival in Angola, Odebrecht had been negotiating different funding solutions with the Brazilian government,  such as the “oil for infrastructure” scheme, which consisted in credit lines from Bank of Brazil (BB – Banco do Brasil) paid

 Interview with a diplomat who served in Luanda during most of the second mandate of Lula, Brasilia, 28 October 2016. 17  Interview with a staff member who worked for Ernesto Baiardi, the Angola director between 2006 and 2014, Luanda, 14 April 2013. 16

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

63

with oil supplies from Angola to the Reciprocal Credit Agreement (CCR – Convênio de Credito Reciproco). Financed by the Export Financing Program (PROEX  – Programa de Financiamento às Exportações), CCR operations greatly benefited Angola, which received about half of the allocated funds between 1997 and 2009 – US$1.4 billion out of US$2.7 billion. Odebrecht stood out as the major benefactor of these credits (Viana 2016). However, in order to compete in the Angolan market, Odebrecht argued that it needed more robust support from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES  – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social). The bank’s officials rejected the demand, citing the lack of added value for Brazilian products and the difficulties to evaluate the activity of construction companies abroad. But the rise of new competitors in Angola allowed Odebrecht to build a stronger and more pressing case. 2002 marked the beginning of a wave of investments from China Construction Bank and Exim Bank in infrastructure development in Angola. The first US$2 billion financing package for public investment projects was approved 2 years later, in 2004. In 2007, China opened another oil-backed loan of $2 billion to fund another round of 100 projects. That same year, China surpassed Brazil and South Africa as the second-largest trading partner after Portugal. The increasingly prominent position of China in Angola offered a formidable argument in favour of greater investment from the Brazilian state (Campos and Vines 2007). In the face of these developments, the PT government requested the BNDES, via CAMEX, to expand the funding for construction companies in 2007.18 The highly sensitive move was presented as a part of the broader strategy of national champions (campeões nacionais), which, among many other things, consisted in concentrating and empowering Brazilian conglomerates to compete overseas (Musacchio et  al. 2017). The discussion on the merits of this policy are out of the scope of this chapter. It needs to be noted, however, that scholars have established the link between political connections and allocation of BNDES loans (Lazarrini 2011). Zanatta also notes that the formation of “pressure rings” between the public and private sector inside the public bureaucracy grew stronger during the period examined in this chapter (Zanatta 2012). In her important recent work, based on information from the Car Wash operation, investigative journalist Malu Gaspar reveals that the discussions between Lula and Emilio Odebrecht on the expansion of overseas credit for construction companies trace back to the months leading up to the 2002 election (Gaspar 2020). At any rate, the involvement of the BNDES accounts was a turning point in Brazil-Angola relations, with the investment of Odebrecht in Angola rising from US$800 million in the period between 2003 and 2007 to around US$3.1 billion between 2007 and 2013 (Viana 2016). Among many other projects, the Lauca hydroelectric plant obtained a US$646 million loan. The Cambambe hydroelectric

18  The Foreign Trade Chamber (CAMEX – Câmara de Comércio Exterior) is an institution subordinated to the Ministry of the Economy in which different organs of the government are represented.

64

M. Alencastro

plant costed US$464 million, and the construction of 3000 houses in Luanda went for US$281 million (Correia Dias 2015). In total, the BNDES funded 26 projects. Crucially, Odebrecht benefited from a significant share of the BNDES loans to Angola. Out of the US$4 billion made available by the BNDES for construction projects in Angola between 2007 and 2013, US$3.1 billion went to Odebrecht. In its attempt to explain this distinctive feature of Brazilian investment in Angola, for public banks should not in principle allocate an overwhelming majority of its resources to one single company, the BNDES argued, among other things, that the engineering sector is inherently concentrated, that Odebrecht was more competitive abroad than any other Brazilian company and that Angola was growing exponentially and was traditionally a difficult market to access (BNDES 2017, 229). BNDES authorities also tried to hide behind Angolan authorities when explaining the decision-making process. As the head of  the BNDES, Luciano Coutinho explained in a deposition to the Federal Accountability Office in Brazil that all projects financed by the bank had to go through the approval process of Angolan regulatory agencies, without specifying which ones. This may be because he was attributing to Angolan institutions a power that they simply did not have. Indeed, the centralization of decisions in the inner circle of the presidency was the rule in Angola between 1979 and 2017. Behind the “socialist planned economy” put in motion when the country became independent in 1975, state institutions gradually waned in significance, with state power, especially after dos Santos’s accession to the presidency in 1979, progressively flowing away from formal channels to the Angolan presidency. This project centred around President José Eduardo dos Santos and his close entourage – referred to by Angolans as the Futungo, after a presidential compound in the outskirts of Luanda; “the Palace”; or simply “the Presidency.” By the time Odebrecht arrived in Angola, this presidentialist system was already fully established. Odebrecht never needed the approval of anyone other than dos Santos (Alencastro 2020). Even if they were all true, these arguments would not suffice to explain why Odebrecht was, by far, the largest recipient of the BNDES transfers to Angola. From a technological viewpoint, other smaller Brazilian companies could easily compete for opportunities in Angola. With exception of the abovementioned dams, the projects funded by  the BNDES did not come close to require high-level expertise. Odebrecht got paid by the Brazilian state to carry tasks like building the popular houses (US$68 million), rehabilitating the Samba highway (US$91 million) or even building the artwork decorating the southeast expressway (US$21 million), only to cite a few (Correia Dias 2015). So why did Odebrecht come to dominate the most tempting credit line made available by the Lula government? After all, between 2008 and 2015, in the words of the Federal Prosecution Service (MPF – Ministério Público Federal) “Angola was the country that obtained the most contracts, received the largest volume of funding, obtained the lowest interest rates and received the fastest approval” (Ministério Público Federal 2015, 6).

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

65

3  Angola: Appropriating Brazil After leaving office in January 2011, Lula remained involved in Brazil’s activities in Angola. Six months into his post-presidential life, he visited Luanda for a keynote speech at the Center for Strategic Studies (Centro de Estudos Estratégicos), Angola’s foremost think tank, managed by former government officials, but not formally attached to the state. On that occasion, he insisted on the “moral and political” obligation of Brazil to help Africa (Portal Vermelho 2011). The event also provided an opportunity for Lula and dos Santos to plan the Angolan presidential election of 2012, in which, as we shall see, the inner circle of the Brazilian politician would take up a leading role.19 When Odebrecht sponsored a second trip of the former president to Angola in 2014, everything was different. Since the arrival of Dilma Rousseff to power in 2011, Odebrecht had been growing distant from the Brazilian government. Interviewees who followed or served at the Brazilian presidency underline that Dilma Rousseff did not share Lula’s interest for foreign policy and Africa in particular. But most of all, one of them points out that she detested the constant meddling of corporations in African foreign policy: When she arrived in Luanda for the first time in 2011, Dilma Rousseff immediately declined to attend a party at her honour sponsored by Odebrecht. She was the first president to skip the traditional visit of Odebrecht facilities.20

Her unambiguous rupture came as a shock for Odebrecht officials. Interviewees and official documents note how Odebrecht officials went out of their way to persuade Lula to take back a leading role in foreign policy proceedings.21 This is the context in which the 2014 visit took place. The fact that venues changed between the two visits is of great significance. Instead of the independent think tank of 2011, Lula gave a keynote speech at the philanthropic institution controlled by the presidential family: the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation. Created in 1996, the philanthropic agency at the heart of the presidency’s strategy that, in short, consisted in the use of privatization to develop a clientelist system (Messiant 2001). Lula was in Luanda in the condition of the former president but also in the condition of Odebrecht advisor.22 This section explores the evolving role of Lula in Brazil-Angola relations.

 The arrangements made during this meeting are at the centre of the accusation against Lula in the Operação Janus conducted by the MPF. According to investigators, between 2008 and 2015, Lula intervened at the BNDES to guarantee the approval of funding for projects in Angola (Ministério Público Federal 2015). 20  Interview with a senior government official with personal access to the president, São Paulo, 24 September 2018. 21  This information comes directly from an interviewee linked to the Lula Institute, São Paulo, 12 June 2017, and an Angolan former minister of communications, who helped organizing the event, Luanda, 4 May 2013. 22  Interview with a former MPLA minister by telephone, São Paulo, 10 January 2020. 19

66

M. Alencastro

The political dimension of Odebrecht’s operations in Angola is well documented. Launched in the mid-1980s, the company’s first project in Angola, the hydroelectric power dam of Capanda in Malanje province, was an attempt to show to the international community that the MPLA government could still project power beyond the capital Luanda (Rodrigues Corrêa and de Castro 2016). Odebrecht also became directly involved in the civil war in the 1990s, when it teamed up with Russian engineering firm Alrosa to occupy the diamond fields of Luanda Sul and establish the Sociedade Mineira de Catoca. Owing to these pioneering projects, in 2002, when the civil war ended and oil revenues started to surge, Odebrecht was in a privileged position to reap the benefits of the economic boom (Alencastro 2020). Even in 2002, when the government of dos Santos was spoiled for choice when it came to foreign contractors, Odebrecht still stood out as a politically relevant partner. Soon after the civil war, dos Santos tasked Odebrecht to, according to Emilio Odebrecht, turn “generals into entrepreneurs” (Costa and Foreque 2017). That involved including a member of the presidential inner circle into every business venture of Odebrecht, as showed in numerous investigative and scholarly works (Alencastro 2020). There is no doubt that Odebrecht believed in the importance of deepening ties with dos Santos and his allies. As noted in the beginning of this chapter, fostering collusion with state elites is an explicit goal of Odebrecht everywhere it operated. The Odebrecht family built the company bearing their name with an ardent belief that monopoly was the most efficient form of organizing business. Nevertheless, the coercion of the Angolan presidency should not be underestimated. Transparent and competitive tenders for construction contracts were an unknown concept for a long time. The details of contracts only became available to the public after strong pressure from civil society in 2015. But according to the BNDES, one rule governed all business deals: that the Angolan government enjoyed the “exclusive responsibility” of selecting the projects and the contractors to be funded by the credit line (BNDES 2017, 231). Vested with the power to designate the company that would receive the funding, the Angolan government controlled the access of Odebrecht to the lucrative export subsidies of the BNDES. This detail, often brought up casually in conversations, is revealing of a broader process that relates to the “license to operate” or the ability of African leaders to respond to the inadequacies of their formal institutions by instrumentalizing and re-empowering private companies. For Frederick Cooper, the African state is in its essence a “gatekeeper,” or interlocutor, between external and domestic realms: whilst the postcolonial state lacked the institutional might of its European counterpart, it nevertheless retained the ability to authorize, or prohibit, the entrance of foreign capital into its territory. With that ability came considerable power: in providing security to foreign capital, the African state also created and enforced the legal framework under which such capital could, or could not, operate (Cooper 2002). However, by 2011, even wartime complicity, generous BNDES credit lines and business opportunities for the elite did not suffice to guarantee access to evermore attractive public contracts. What the Angolan presidency needed from Odebrecht was political support. By then, the first cycle of post-war rule, marked by the victory

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

67

over UNITA and the exponential growth of the oil-fuelled economy, was slowly coming to an end. The inauguration of the 2010 constitution, which concentrated even more power in the president’s hand, marked the advent of a new opposition movement led by a young generation of civil rights leaders. In this context, the dos Santos regime needed to turn 2012 into the beginning of another political cycle. After his trip to Luanda in 2011, Lula became personally involved in the attempt of the MPLA, in power since independence, to brand itself as a new, legitimate government, after more than three decades in power. The next few paragraphs explore how Odebrecht helped the MPLA, an inexperienced electoral contender, to appropriate the narrative and the aesthetic from the campaign of the PT, by then one of best performing political parties of the Global South. With the active political help of the former president and Odebrecht, the Angolan president surrounded himself with Brazilian advisors to create a political project that essentially replicated the Brazilian presidential campaign in Angola. João Santana, the political campaign advisor that played a key role in rebranding Lula in the aftermath of the corruption scandal that almost cost him his re-election in 2006, was hired to run the campaign of the MPLA.23 Angolan authorities tried to camouflage the presence of Brazilians on the campaign trail for fear of accusations of foreign intervention (Fellet 2012).24 Throughout the months that followed, Lula and dos Santos set the stage for what Fernando Coronil would have called “the theater of modernization” in Angola or the creation of practices and rituals of rule through which the political and economic elite reproduced its power by defining the terms of national development (Coronil 1997). They proudly remarked that new roads criss-crossed the country and hospitals, schools and other public buildings prospered in once forgotten or devastated middle- and small-sized cities. The MPLA organized the campaign around ambitious but easy to understand programmes that closely resembled those promoted by the PT. For instance, Minha Casa, Minha Vida, a centrepiece of Brazil’s housing programme, in which Odebrecht was counted among the leading partners of the government, was remodelled into one project aiming at stimulating entrepreneurship entitled Meu Negócio, Minha Vida. Public relations campaigns projected the material and visual authority of the state and those at its helms across the territory in an unprecedented manner – one of the most popular slogans, devised by the Brazilian public relations team, announced that the “state is here” (o Estado está aqui). On the stump, dos Santos sounded like Rousseff, especially in the way he introduced the election as a new chapter of the national development, carried by a new, powerful and omnipresent state. “The same  Interview with a staff member of João Santana in Angola, São Paulo, 2 February 2018.  It is worth noting that the MPLA had a long story of hiring Brazilian campaign managers. Some disembarked during the first presidential campaign in 1992 and made a career in Angola, actively participating in the construction of the post-war media and news landscape. However, the 2012 campaign was the first time that a leading Brazilian politician was involved in their workings in Angola. Interview with a Brazilian public relations consultant based in Angola, Luanda, 7 July 2013.

23 24

68

M. Alencastro

people told the very same story in two different countries,” argued a staff member of João Santana, who coordinated the campaign of Rousseff and dos Santos. “It felt as if Lula elected two presidents in two different continents”.25 In essence, Angolan political elites invoked Lula, both for his international prestige and his tutelary role over Brazilian politics, to justify the perpetuation of dos Santos in power. The legitimating narrative performed two key functions. On the one hand, they supplied a historical and discursive tradition that reinforced the democratic credentials of the regime. On the other hand, they furnished social arguments that purportedly justified the expansion and consolidation of the state. In the eyes of many national onlookers, Brazilian participation in the 2012 campaign was a watershed moment for dos Santos. He came to believe that his long-­ standing and authoritarian rule could be recycled in a legitimate, seemingly democratic programme. By then, Lula was not just an advisor of the government, but the provider of a political discourse that helped recycle the regime in place since decolonization. Soon after the election, dos Santos spoke for the first time about leaving office. He did so in an interview with Franklin Martins, a former spokesman of the Lula government (Martins 2013). Throughout this period, Brazilian civil society expressed concern about the influence of Brazil in Angolan politics. A number of authors warned against a new form of imperialism, this time between nations of the Global South. From this perspective, Brazil re-enacted the European powers by expanding a vast political and financial network that constrained African nations. Along with Mozambique, Angola was often cited as an emblematic case of alleged Brazilian sub-imperialism (Carta Capital 2013). Often portrayed as a power broker, Lula seemed to mesmerize his African interlocutors with his charisma and promises. The idea that Angolans were in awe with the promises of Brazil and its politicians is rooted on the premise that African elites are passive and naïve, with little margin of manoeuvre against richer nations. A growing body of literature in the history of politics of Africa has challenged this perception. Chipaike and Knowledge (2018) underline the “multifaceted character” of African agency – that is, the ability of different African actors to exert assertive agency in their encounters with external partners. As this section and this chapter suggest, the one who set the tone of Lula and Odebrecht’s actions in Angola, especially after 2011, was actually dos Santos.

4  Conclusion The fall of the price of crude petroleum in late 2015 to the lowest level since 2009 shook the world, violently putting a stop on the dynamic of growth in oil-producing states. In Angola, and Brazil, this année charnière would soon crush visions of

25

 Interview with a Brazilian public relations consultant based in Angola, Luanda, 7 July 2013.

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

69

development announced in the 2010–2012 electoral cycle. In less than 3 years, their leaders would be confronted with the stark reality of political and economic collapse. Soon after the visit of Lula to the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation in 2014, the political crisis intensified in Brazil, and the former president cancelled all international commitments. As domestic revenues collapsed, Odebrecht became all the more dependent on Angola. By then, the country was seen as an endless revenue generator and a judicial safe haven.26 Between 2015 and 2017, the global value of the project portfolio of the company fell almost by half from US$28 to US$15. The US$1 billion contract from the Angolan state for the maintenance of the hydroelectric dams of Capanda, Cambambe and Lauca was seen as a genuine financial lifeline. The government of dos Santos awarded the contract despite the fact that the BNDES suspended all the credit lines with Angola immediately after Michel Temer took over as president in 2016. Most importantly, Angola never contacted the Brazilian Federal Prosecution Service to obtain more information on the Car Wash investigations. Until the end, Angola remained a land where Odebrecht could shroud its operations in opacity. After all, this story is about an alliance between a company and a state that lasted decades and survived a range of volte-faces. Odebrecht was part of every mutation of the MPLA since the advent of independence in Angola. When the Angolan state abandoned Marxism-Leninism and embraced capitalism in the early 1990s, Odebrecht was there to offer options for the MPLA for the privatization of diamond mining companies. When the regime of dos Santos state sought to enhance its democratic credentials in 2012, Odebrecht provided an entirely new ideological repertoire. But this time, the trick did not work for long. Overwhelmed by an economic crisis, the regime was forced to initiate a political transition and replace dos Santos with João Lourenço in the presidential election of 2017 (Alencastro 2018). For its strong association with dos Santos, Odebrecht soon became a toxic brand in Angola and gradually disappeared from the landscape. The company was invited to sell its stake in critical projects like the Sociedade Mineira de Catoca. In the end, Odebrecht only kept the maintenance contracts for hydroelectric dams. It is nowhere to be seen on the streets of Luanda and the provincial capitals, where it used to have a dominating presence. The end of the Odebrecht empire came in a sudden and unannounced manner. An entire chapter of Brazil-Angola relations has abruptly closed with the departure from power of Lula and dos Santos. This chapter has shown how the aspirations of these politicians, who so firmly believed in the longevity and resilience of their political legacies, were, to a considerable extent, tied to the business strategy of Odebrecht. The fact that a corporation played such an important role in bilateral relations shows the importance of paying attention to the corporate dimension of Brazil-Africa politics.

26

 See Fellet (2017).

70

M. Alencastro

Acknowledgements  The author would like to thank the support provided by FAPESP grant 2017/13092-1.

References Alencastro, Mathias. 2018. Brazilian corruption overseas: The case of Odebrecht in Angola. In Corruption in Latin America: How politicians and corporations steal from citizens, ed. Robert Rotberg, 109–123. Cham: Springer. ———. 2020. A Odebrecht e a formação do estado angolano (1984–2015). Novos Estudos CEBRAP 39 (1): 125–141. Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social. 2017. Livro verde: Nossa história tal como ela é. Rio de Janeiro: Edições BNDES. Baru, Sanjaya. 2009. The influence of business and media on Indian foreign policy. India Review 8 (3): 266–285. Cabral, Marcelo, and Regiane Oliveira. 2017. O príncipe: uma biografia não autorizada de Marcelo Odebrecht. São Paulo: Austral. Campos, Pedro Henrique. 2014. Estranhas catedrais. Niterói: EdUFF. Campos, Indira, and Alex Vines. 2007. Angola and China, a pragmatic partnership. Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/ legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/080306_angolachina.pdf. Accessed 6 June 2020. Carta Capital. 2013. Expansão brasileira é considerada imperialista por alguns vizinhos. Carta Capital, January 16. https://www.cartacapital.com.br/mundo/expansao-brasileira-e-considerada-imperialista-por-alguns-vizinhos/. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Cason, Jeffrey, and Timothy Power. 2009. Presidentialization, pluralization, and the rollback of Itamaraty: Explaining change in Brazilian foreign policy making in the Cardoso-Lula Era. International Political Science Review 30 (2): 117–140. Chipaike, Ronald, and Matarutse H. Knowledge. 2018. The question of African agency in international relations. Cogent Social Sciences 4 (1): 1487257. Coll, Steve. 2012. Private empire. New York: Penguin Press. Collombat, Benoît, and David Servenay. 2014. Histoire secrète du patronat de 1945 à nos jours: Le vrai visage du capitalisme français. Paris: La Découverte. Cooper, Frederick. 2002. Africa since 1940: The past of the present. London: Cambridge University Press. Coronil, Fernando. 1997. The magical state: Nature, money, and modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Correia Dias, Fernando Álvares. 2015. Financiamentos às exportações pelo BNDES: das indústrias aos serviços de engenharia. Brasília: Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas da Consultoria Legislativa/Senado Federal. Costa, Fabiano, and Flávia Foreque. 2017. Presidente de Angola pediu para ajudar ex-generais, diz Emílio. G1, April 26. https://g1.globo.com/politica/operacao-lava-jato/noticia/presidente-deangola-pediu-para-odebrecht-ajudar-a-transformar-ex-generais-em-empresarios-diz-emilio. ghtml. Accessed 29 May 2020. Dye, Barnaby Joseph, and Mathias Alencastro. 2020. Debunking Brazilian exceptionalism in its Africa relations: Evidence from Angola and Tanzania. Global Society: 1–22. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13600826.2020.1722617. Fellet, João. 2012. Em Angola, marqueteiro do PT busca reeleição de líder há 33 anos no poder. BBC Brasil, August 30. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2012/08/120829_angola_ santana_jf_ac.shtml. Accessed 28 Feb 2020.

Economic Diplomacy, Lula Style: The Case of Odebrecht in Angola

71

———. 2017. Pressionada nos EUA e América Latina, Odebrecht encontra “refúgio” em Angola. BBC Brasil, March 17. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-39288147. Accessed 14 Apr 2020. Gaspar, Malu. 2020. História de uma amizade. Revista Piauí 160. https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/ materia/historia-de-uma-amizade/. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Grant, Wyn. 2000. Globalisation, big business and the Blair Government. CSGR Working Paper No 58/00. Lazarrini, Sergio. 2011. Capitalismo de Laços. São Paulo: Campus. MacQueen, Norrie. 1998. Peacekeeping by attrition: The United Nations in Angola. The Journal of Modern African Studies 36 (3): 399–422. Maklouf, Luís. 2005. Já vi esse filme: reportagens (e polêmicas) sobre Lula e o PT (1984–2005). São Paulo: Geração Editorial. Martins, Franklin. 2013. José Eduardo dos Santos. BAND TV Presidentes Africanos, Episode 5. Melly, Paul, and Vincent Darracq. 2013. A new way to engage? French policy in Africa from Sarkozy to Hollande. Chatham House 2013/1. Melo, Ovidio de. 2009. Recordações de um removedor de mofo no Itamaraty. Brasília: FUNAG. Messiant, Christine. 2001. The Eduardo Dos Santos Foundation: Or, how Angola’s regime is taking over civil society. African Affairs 100 (399): 287–309. Ministério Público Federal. 2015. Procedimento investigatório criminal (PIC) n°1.16.000.000991/2015-08. http://www.mpf.mp.br/df/sala-de-imprensa/docs/operacaojanus-denuncia. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. ———. 2018. Procedimento investigatório criminal (PIC) n° 0006803-31.2018.403.61.81. http:// www.mpf.mp.br/sp/sala-de-imprensa/noticias-sp/lava-jato-em-sao-paulo-denuncia-lula-porlavagem-de-dinheiro. Accessed 27 Feb 2020. Moreira Lima, Sérgio Eduardo, and Luís Claudio Villafañe G. Santos. 2015. Quarenta anos das relações Brasil-Angola. Brasília: FUNAG. Musacchio, Aldo, Sergio Lazzarini, Pedro Makhoul, and Emily Simmons. 2017. The role and impact of development banks: A review of their founding, focus, and influence. http://people. brandeis.edu/~aldom/papers/The%20Role%20and%20Impact%20of%20Development%20 Banks%20-%203-9-2017.pdf. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Musella, Fortunato. 2018. Political leaders beyond party politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Odebrecht, Norberto. 1983. Survival, growth and perpetuity. São Paulo: Odebrecht. Odebrecht. 2014. Relatório Annual 2013–2014. https://www.odebrecht.com/sites/default/files/raodebrecht-2014-final_pdf_site_pt.pdf. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. ———. 2015. Relatório Anual, 2014–2015. https://www.odebrecht.com/sites/default/files/ra_ odebrecht_2015.pdf. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Pressly, Linda. 2018. The largest foreign bribery case in history. BBC World Service, April 22. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43825294. Accessed 14 May 2020. Rangel, Lia. 2003. Para Celso Amorim, Brasil vai redescobrir a África. Agência Brasil, November 3. http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/discursos-artigos-e-entrevistas-categoria/7590-entrevista-do-ministro-de-estado-das-relacoes-exteriores-embaixador-celso-amorim-a-agencia-brasil-para-celso-amorim-brasil-vai-redescobrir-a-africa. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Risério, Antonio. 2007. A utopia brasileira e os movimentos negros. São Paulo: Editora 34. Rodrigues Corrêa, André, and Douglas de Castro. 2016. Transnacionalismo e paradiplomacia nas relações econômicas Brasil-Angola: o caso da construção de Capanda pela construtora Odebrecht. Austral: Revista Brasileira de Estratégia e Relações Internacionais 5 (9): 274–301. Secco, Lincoln. 2011. História do PT, 1978–2010. Cotia: Ateliê. Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula da. 2010. Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, durante almoço oferecido ao presidente de Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, 23 June 2010. Brasília: Presidência da República/Secretaria de Imprensa. Soares de Oliveira, Ricardo. 2007. Oil and politics in the Gulf of Guinea. London: Hurst. ———. 2015. Magnificent and beggar land: Angola since the civil war. London: Hurst. Strange, Susan. 1992. States, firms and diplomacy. International Affairs 68 (1): 1–15.

72

M. Alencastro

Portal Vermelho. 2011. Lula: Brasil tem “obrigação política e moral” de ajudar a África, July 1. https://vermelho.org.br/2011/07/01/lula-brasil-tem-obrigacao-politica-e-moral-de-ajudar-a-africa/. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Valsamakis, Antoinette. 2012. The role of South African business in South Africa’s post-apartheid economic diplomacy. PhD dissertation, Birmingham: University of Birmingham. Viana, Natália. 2016. A equação brasileira. Agência Pública, February 22. https://apublica. org/2016/02/a-equacao-brasileira/. Accessed 28 Feb 2020. Zanatta, Rafael. 2012. The risk of the new developmentalism: “Brasil Maior” plan and bureaucratic rings. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2120002. Accessed 28 Feb 2020.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety? Barnaby Joseph Dye

1  Introduction Brazil’s booming presence in twenty-first-century Africa has rapidly decreased in the past decade. From 2003, ties between country and continent soared: trade experienced a sixfold increase between 2005 and 2015 (Stolte 2015), whilst spending on SouthSouth cooperation reached a reported ~US$700 million in 2010,1 and the number of Brazilian embassies in Africa rose above that of Great Britain (Stolte 2015). Whilst trade was concentrated in lusophone countries and Africa’s larger extractive economies, Brazil’s presence, particularly in diplomatic and development cooperation ties, notably spread across the continent to countries with little prior engagement. Collectively, this suggested that Brazil was becoming a major new power in Africa, joining China, India and other ‘emerging’ or ‘rising’ powers in meaningfully diversifying the continent’s international relations. However, after a decade-long boom came a swift collapse. This retreat has been geographically unequal. Trade stabilised to an extent from 2016 at around US$12.6 billion (Seibert and Visentini 2019),2 whilst Brazilian firms maintained a stronger presence in lusophone countries: Odebrecht in 2017 employed 13,000 people in Angola, down from a 17,000 peak, whilst Vale continues operations in Mozambique after its US$9.5 billion investment

1  Derived from a total South-South cooperation spend of US$1.2 billion (although this is disputed; see Carmody (2013, 127)) of which 60% supposedly went to Africa. 2  Figures from the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (APEX – Agência Brasileira de Promoção de Exportações e Investimentos): https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/exports-toafrica.

B. J. Dye (*) Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_6

73

74

B. J. Dye

there (Stratfor 2017). This fall and its geographic inequality remain little understood. Indeed, the speed at which Brazil has withdrawn from many countries in Africa presents something of a puzzle: given the degree of diplomatic support, development cooperation spending and corporate investment between 2003 and 2012, why didn’t Brazil’s activities embed beyond lusophone Africa? Why have projects not been implemented whilst economic ties markedly reduced? This chapter analyses these questions through the case study of Tanzania. It is particularly interesting given Brazil’s limited pre-existing engagement in the country before the Workers’ Party (PT  – Partido dos Trabalhadores) 2003 arrival in government and significant expansion between 2005 and 2015. This makes it exemplary of the Brazil-Africa boom which involved the country building ties with states across the continent that it had not had strong relations with previously. Since 2015, Tanzania also exemplifies the extent to which Brazil’s presence in Africa beyond lusophone countries has collapsed, as there are now almost no remaining Brazilian projects in Tanzania (with the exception of the Cotton Victoria scheme). Tanzania is therefore a good case study to empirically document the bust, as well as the boom, in Brazil-Africa relations. The chapter also makes a theoretical contribution to understand the puzzle of Brazil-Africa’s unravelling. As well as demonstrating known weaknesses in the Brazil-Africa relationship, such as structural economic limitations and an overly presidential control of foreign policy, the chapter advances a new concept of naivety. This refers to the way in which Brazilian actors lacked knowledge, or made misleading assumptions, about the political and policymaking environment of the countries they were working in. In part, such naivety stems from structural issues in the Brazil-Africa relationship, such as the lack of historic ties, linguistic barriers or an intellectual tradition of studying the continent. Additionally, the concept of naivety covers assumptions seemingly made by a wide variety of actors, based on generalising from experience elsewhere on the continent or from the rhetoric and policy vision of the Lula years that saw Brazil as a ‘southern’ brother to Africa, with unique knowledge of the continent.

2  A  gency Versus Structural Factors in Africa’s Emerging Power Relations 2.1  Explaining Brazil-Africa Relations 2.1.1  Structural Determinants There are two dominant narratives posited to explain the boom and bust in Brazil-­ Africa relations. The first is more structural. Crucial here is the early 2000s to 2014 commodity boom. It peaked global corporate interest in investment in commodity extraction, including in Africa. Thus, Petrobras expanded operations across the Gulf of Guinea, investing in new exploration blocks, including in

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

75

Tanzania (Carmody 2013). Meanwhile, Vale, Brazil’s mining conglomerate, built on existing political ties in Mozambique to become the major player in the large Tete mining project (Cezne 2019). The commodity boom also supported infrastructure building given the demand for infrastructure to enable commodity extraction and given the way the boom itself increased government finance for projects. Here, the premier company is Odebrecht who, for example, built the Lauca Dam in Angola – effectively Africa’s joint largest by installed capacity to date3 – on the back of the country’s explosion in oil wealth (Soares de Oliveira 2015). Additionally, smaller firms like Queiroz Galvão established themselves, for instance, in Ghana where its own petroleum-­driven boom between 2008 and 2012 helped pay for motorways in Accra and elsewhere.4 The commodity boom was also a major bonus for Brazil, increasing the government’s budget for diplomatic ventures, South-South development cooperation and subsidised loans for infrastructure (Carmody 2013; Seibert 2019a; Dye and Alencastro 2020). Equally, the bust in commodities in 2014 is an important factor explaining BrazilAfrica’s fall, reducing the profitability of mineral and petroleum projects and squeezing the budgets of the companies and governments of Brazil and many of those in Africa (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). Wider BRICs-Africa trade, for instance, dropped 70% between 2013 and 2017 (Standard Bank 2017, 1), particularly after 2014, decreasing from US$26.7 billion in 2014 to US$12.4 billion by 2016 (Standard Bank 2017, 6). Responding to this and the fallout of the Car Wash (Lava Jato) corruption scandal, Petrobras closed their Tanzanian office and sold a US$1.5 billion stake in Nigeria to a Vitol-led joint venture (Reuters 2018); Brazilian firms also sold or downscaled participation in a copper mine in Zambia and an iron mine in Conakry, Guinea (Seibert and Visentini 2019). Another structural issue limiting relations is the lack of physical connections between Brazil and Africa (Seibert 2019b). Few flights and shipping routes directly connect continent and country. Another key structural factor concerns Brazilian politics. Brazil’s parliament, the Congress, is characterised by strong fragmentation. It is rare for any one party to get more than roughly a third of seats (Limongi 2006). Indeed, the PT never received more than a quarter of seats during their 14-year rule. This was an important limitation on Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, as it meant that neither could easily legislate for longer-term changes that might cement African relations and South-South ties. For instance, neither president was actually able to pass debt relief, despite making repeated pledges about this on trips to Africa.5 This was particularly true under President Dilma, who struggled in her relations with Congress, ultimately being impeached (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017). This factor increased the degree to which foreign policy became more presidential, i.e. concentrated on the president’s office.

 At 2100 MW, it equals the Aswan High Dam in Egypt.  Interviews, senior Itamaraty diplomat, São Paulo, 2019. 5  For instance, in 2010 and 2013 (Dye 2018, chapter 7). 3 4

76

B. J. Dye

2.1.2  Presidential and Corporate Agency The second narrative concerns the agency of individuals, and especially Brazilian presidents, in driving the trajectory and content of Brazil-Africa. As described in this volume’s introduction, literature here highlights the central role of President Lula (2003–2010). He visited 29 countries during his presidency, making strident speeches extolling the brotherhood, partnership and new dawn of emancipatory world relations flowing from South-South cooperation (Mawdsley et al. 2017). Lula also increased the scale of finance for corporate operations in Africa. Under his direction, from 2007, Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) extended credit for projects, which amounted to an accumulated R$2 billion by 2012 (Carmody 2013) and reached a total of R$12.6 billion for export services, largely related to infrastructure projects (Alencastro 2019). He also pushed for Brazil’s development cooperation to become what Carmody (2013) cites as the largest development cooperation spender by 2010: the budget for Brazil’s Development Cooperation Agency (ABC  – Agência de Cooperação Brasileira) increased from US$120 million in 2006 to US$1.2 billion in 2010.6 Comparison with Lula’s successors strengthens this argument. President Dilma, although broadly maintaining her predecessor’s Africa policy, slashed development cooperation by 50% in 2 years7 (Stolte 2015, 159) and only visited six countries during her tenure. As this volume’s introduction states, this trajectory dramatically accelerated with Presidents Temer and now Bolsonaro, who fundamentally shifted foreign policy attention away from Africa, including embassy closures (teleSUR 2019). Thus, Hochstetler and Inoue (2019) demonstrate that although development cooperation remained steady from 2015 to 2016, by the end of 2020, the number projects will decrease by two-thirds as ongoing initiatives finish. A flagship cooperation initiative, the Ghanaian branch of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMPRAPA  – Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária), closed in 2018. Moreover, Temer and Bolsonaro initiated an essential suspension of lending by Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES  – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), from 2016 onwards (The Economist 2017), which had been the key Brazilian financier for infrastructure domestically and in Africa (Hochstetler 2014). Such presidentially initiated shifts are not new. The prioritisation and valuing of Africa in particular have consistently changed from president to president as they have taken different sides of the ‘americanismo versus globalismo’ debate about whether Brazil’s interests are best served through relations with the industrialised world, and especially the United States, or with the Global South (Seibert 2019b). The period of 1961–1964, under President João Goulart, saw the first serious engagement with the continent, including the opening of six embassies, four consulates and a 1961 trade tour (Stolte 2015; Seibert 2019b). Following the military

 Although this is disputed; see Carmody (2013, 127).  Falling to US$396 million in 2013 (Seibert 2019a).

6 7

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

77

coup, a foreign policy retreat lasted until 1974, when newly installed President Geisel responded to the international oil crisis by initiating a foreign policy era of ‘responsible pragmatism’, in which Brazil sought to diversify oil imports and internationalise its strong construction and manufacturing industries (Stolte 2015; Seibert 2019b). This involved oil-for-credit facilities financing infrastructure, a prominent example of this being the Capanda Dam in Angola (Garcia and Kato 2015). Thus, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (also known as Itamaraty) stressed the importance of southern ties, and Brazil became the first country to recognise the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA – Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) regime, before its Soviet backers (Seibert 2019a).8 During this era, Brazil also became a full member of the African Development Bank in 1983 (having joined as an observer in 1974). Foreign policy changed again from 1985, with democratic governments preferring ties with America and Europe (Seibert 2019b). South-South cooperation persisted through the institutionalisation of ABC but was given a far lower priority. Brazil’s orientation towards ‘southern’ developing countries and Africa has thus ebbed and flowed with changes in presidents playing an important role. Additionally, the agency of Brazilian companies is itself significant. Whilst not the initiators of the PT’s original Brazil-Africa vision, infrastructure and resource-­ extractive companies like Odebrecht, Camargo Corrêa, Queiroz Galvão, Petrobras and Vale were key agents shaping and implementing the party’s Africa policy. They were increasingly seen by the PT as the agents capable of delivering the Brazil-­ Africa agenda (Dye 2018; Alencastro 2019; Dye and Alencastro 2020). Petrobras, for instance, brokered many deals with minimal state support, arriving in Tanzania before the embassy reopened in 2005. This point is especially pertinent in Angola, where Odebrecht’s relations with President dos Santos’ regime were so well aligned (Soares de Oliveira 2015) that one interviewed diplomat commented that ‘Marcelo (the company’s currently jailed former CEO) is more important than the ambassador’.9 To a lesser extent, Vale enjoys similar close political ties in Mozambique, having established mining operations since the 1990s (Cezne 2019). However, it is also important to look beyond Brazil. A number of texts on Brazil-­ Africa (e.g. Stolte 2015; Seibert 2019b) largely overlook the agency of political elites in Africa. Africanist literature on the continent’s wider international ties frequently seeks to dispel the ideas of the continent’s economic and political elites as helpless and mere recipients. Whitfield and Fraser’s (2009) edited volume similarly demonstrates the degree of agency governments in Africa have to shape terms, even if not all use it. Countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, for instance, are noted for insisting that international donors engage on their own terms, forcing organisations to support and adapt to each regime’s policies, despite receiving a significant percentage of their budget and GDP from donors (Whitfield and Fraser 2009). This point has also been made extensively with regard to the literature on

 Interview, former senior official, PT Government, 2016.  Interviews, senior journalist and Itamaraty diplomat, Brasilia, 2016.

8 9

78

B. J. Dye

China-Africa (e.g. Power et al. 2012; Mohan and Lampert 2013). The emphasis on agency is also relevant for understanding business relations in Africa: particularly in more centralised authoritarian states with less transparent legal frameworks and in which the rule of law can be overridden and where personal relations with key members of government are vital for Brazilian firms’ operations, as again highlighted by the case of Odebrecht in Angola. Their close ties allowed the company to extend from core infrastructure to mining, agriculture, supermarket management and public services (Soares de Oliveira 2015; Alencastro 2019). This chapter asserts that this African agency was less appreciated by Brazilian actors, leading to naivety that helps explain the downturn in Brazil-Africa ties. 2.1.3  Naivety in Brazil’s Relations with Africa Naivety here refers to having limited knowledge about the complex variety of contexts in Africa. In particular, it focuses on an insufficient understanding of how to read the state-business environment in order to successfully implement projects, whether for development cooperation or for profit-making initiatives. In the case of Brazil, its naivety has a number of different underpinnings. Some of these are structural. A low level of prior relations between continent and country over the twentieth century mattered. As indicated by the small volumes of trade in the previous century, the variable foreign policy priority and the absence of connections like direct shipping, there weren’t a large number of businesses and individuals with experience of working in Africa at the start of the push to Africa in the twenty-first century (Stolte 2015). Language constituted another barrier to access and understanding. Given that English or French is the most spoken language, Brazilian Portuguese does not unlock large swaths of Africa. Relatedly, the study of Africa within Brazil is limited. There is one Brazilian Centre for African Studies at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) and another at São Paulo University (USP – Universidade de São Paulo), but these are little resourced, and the former only started after a 2005 course.10 Collectively, these factors resulted in a limited pool of expertise and experience to draw on. Arguably, this weakness was aggravated by the PT’s approach to Africa ties. Lula and many of his ministers asserted a narrative that the continent and country shared very similar economic and environmental challenges. Brazil was joined to West Africa in Gondwanaland and resultantly has comparable plant species. In other words, parts of Brazil’s north contain similar savannah zones to areas of Africa (Seibert 2019a). Additionally, the Atlantic slave trade has generated some shared cultural roots in cuisine and music. These connections were used to validate a public discourse proclaiming Brazil as the ‘brother of Africa’, a country with the solutions for poverty reduction, economic growth and healthcare (Carmody 2013; Stolte 2015; Mawdsley et al. 2017). As Foreign Minister Celso Amorim used to quote, ‘for 10

 See https://www.ufrgs.br/cebrafrica/en/sobre/.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

79

every African problem there is a Brazilian solution’ (Dye 2018, 131; Seibert 2019a, 108). This rhetoric bred a confidence, echoed by those interviewed for this research, that Brazil’s history and its environment equipped it to understand the continent.11 Despite the most experienced actors, Odebrecht and Vale, having only primarily worked in Angola and Mozambique, respectively, Brazil’s history was presumed sufficient. Indeed, interviewees and political speeches of the time asserted a familiarity with ‘Africa’. This naivety, condensing the continent’s complexity and contexts, is used in this analysis as a conceptual tool, alongside other structural and agency drivers, to understand the case of Tanzania and explain how Brazil-Africa relations failed to embed despite substantive state support. Whilst not using the concept, there are a number of academic publications which demonstrate instances of such naivety. For example, Cabral (2016) shows the way the Brazilian actors misunderstood the African context and the relevance of their policies, either when thinking about ‘family farming’ or in the export of tractors and other machinery to the continent. This chapter furthers these examples with the case of Tanzania.

3  Case Study of Tanzania 3.1  History and Development Cooperation Projects Brazil’s ties in Tanzania reflect the shifting status of Africa in the country’s foreign policy. Relations began in the 1970s, when Brazil sought to increase ties with ‘southern’ countries and increasingly engaged with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the G77 grouping of developing countries at the UN.  Tanzania’s President Nyerere’s advocacy of pan-Africanism and of greater South-South relations through the NAM made the country prominent. Thus, Brazil opened an embassy in Dar es Salaam in 1982 and extended a line of credit for the upgrading of a major highway between the de facto capital and Morogoro. Little cooperation or investment occurred after 1985, however, with the embassy closing in 1991. This was reversed under Lula and the PT. Tanzania was in the first tranche of embassy openings. Alongside historical links, interviewed senior diplomats indicated that Tanzania’s importance came from it being a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council at the time, which was strategic given Brazil’s long-held desire to gain a permanent seat in that forum (Stolte 2015; Dye 2018, chapter 2). It was also influenced by Brazil and Tanzania’s membership of the G15 group of countries that cooperate in WTO meetings for perceived developing country interests.12 Whilst Petrobras already had an established presence in offshore gas exploration, the refounding of the embassy initiated significant further engagement. In 2008, a Brazil-Tanzania Technical Cooperation Deal was signed with the ABC  As reflected by interviews with senior and junior Itamaraty diplomats and researchers and senior officials in Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão, Eletrobras, 2015–2016. 12  Interviews, senior diplomats, Itamaraty, Rio de Janeiro, Dar es Salaam. 11

80

B. J. Dye

Table 1  Development cooperation projects in Tanzania Project title Improvement of Tanzanian Cashew Nut Postharvest Technologies Improvement of Tanzanian Vegetable Nut Postharvest Technologies Development of the Tanzanian Cattle Production Capacity Strengthening of HIV/AIDS Response in Tanzania Cotton Victoria ($9 million)

Brazilian agency EMBRAPA

EMBRAPA EMBRAPA Ministry of Health ABC

Content Promotion of semi-mechanical harvesting techniques Promotion of semi-mechanical harvesting techniques Assessment and knowledge transfer activities Training, policy knowledge exchange, civil society capacity building Training, education, technology dissemination

Source: compiled from official reports (Agência Brasileira de Cooperação 2010)

(Agência Brasileira de Cooperação 2010). Through diplomatic negotiations, a number of projects started around agriculture, primarily consisting of capacity building, knowledge exchange and the promotion of Brazilian products. An HIV/AIDS prevention project was also initiated. These activities fit a wider pattern in Brazil’s development partnerships that primarily involved the export of its policies. Brazil’s agricultural transformation, especially its agricultural institute EMBRAPA and its seed and agro-processing technologies, is seen as globally exemplary (Cabral 2016). Additionally, Brazil’s response to HIV/AIDS is often regarded as relatively successful. Thus, Tanzania’s development projects echo a wider practise whereby it exports domestic policies and technologies to Africa, often using the same institutions (Table 1). Cotton Victoria is the largest development cooperation scheme, echoing other international projects around the continent like Shire Zambezi, Cotton 4 and ProSAVANA (Seibert 2019a). It stems from a WTO settlement whose proceeds were mandated for African cotton development projects.13 Brazil decided to locate one of these centres in Tanzania, with others in Mali and Zambia. The so-called Cotton Victoria project is also supposed to serve Uganda, Kenya and Burundi and involves a demonstration centre that aims to improve cotton yields with training alongside technology dissemination. Whilst Tanzanian civil servants and politicians did not reject the project, interviewed Brazilian officials reported their engagement as minimal, with the Tanzanian government taking a long time to approve decisions whilst also providing little policy input. This is reflected in the time taken for implementation of a relatively simple project: Cotton Victoria only started in 2017,14 despite its conception and initial approval in 2012.15 Like the other

 Interviews (World Food Programme 2017).  Signed off in 2016. 15  Itamaraty press statements; interviews with senior and junior Itamaraty and Tanzanian diplomats, 2015–2016. 13 14

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

81

‘cooperation’ projects in Tanzania, Cotton Victoria was thus essentially Brazilianinitiated and conceived and pushed by the ABC and Itamaraty diplomats. Limited interest from the Tanzanian state then resulted in a long implementation delay. Interviews in Tanzania16 reinforced this perception, citing Brasilia’s control over decisions, with staff in Dar es Salaam given little autonomy. Given this overriding role of the Federal Brazilian Government, the decrease in funding for the ABC, and Dilma’s greater emphasis on economic rather than development cooperation ties (Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017; Hochstetler and Inoue 2019), ‘aid’ projects in Tanzania petered out by 2015.17 Only Cotton Victoria remains functional today. This demonstrates the fall in Brazil’s relations with Africa, which faded away following the end of presidential diplomacy from both sides in 2013 and cuts to Brazil’s development cooperation budget. This underlines the importance of both governments’ actions in sustaining Brazil-Tanzania and the role of broader structural constraints.

3.2  Private Sector Infrastructure Projects 3.2.1  Odebrecht in Tanzania Infrastructure projects, however, demonstrate a more complex mix of agency. On the one hand, there is evidence of Brazilian diplomats’ important role. As one senior diplomat explained, ‘Kikwete (the Tanzanian president), he extended an invitation to Brazilian companies to work on energy, infrastructure and agriculture [his three priority areas]’ which matched the Brazilian competencies Itamaraty was supposed to support.18 Following this meeting, the Brazilian ambassador ‘identified energy, mining and logistics’ and sent out invitations and briefing notes to companies in Brazil accordingly.19 Brazil’s largest construction company, Odebrecht, responded. Its representatives visited Dar es Salaam in November 2009, demonstrating the firms’ resources to engage in new ventures in Africa. The embassy’s efforts, particularly in relation to development projects, were strengthened by the visit of Foreign Minister Celso Amorim who held meetings with senior government figures, raising the profile of Brazil in the country. This is partly because diplomats sought to secure agreements that could be announced during his trip, a factor that helped initiate and push the agriculture and HIV/AIDS cooperation projects cited above. Lula’s high-profile trip also enabled senior company introductions. As one diplomat explained, such backing is significant in Tanzania as without it you can have a ‘very hard time’.20  Conducted in 2015–2016.  Interview, diplomat, Itamaraty, 2015. 18  Interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016. 19  Interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016. 20  Interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016. 16 17

82

B. J. Dye

This shows that, in a country with almost no pre-existing business relations with Brazil, Itamaraty’s diplomats and high-level political visits played a major role in raising the profile of Brazil-Tanzania relations and initiating development cooperation and corporate projects. For instance, an Odebrecht official explained that it influenced their investment choices: (we were) ‘looking at the market before in Kenya (…) then Lula came [to Tanzania] and when you are in Dar es Salaam, you see the opportunities (…) we talked to people (…) Ministry of Energy and Minerals (…) Stiegler’s Gorge [was apparent] as a priority project’.21 This role of the Brazilian state in initiating projects contrasts with lusophone countries, Angola and Mozambique, where Odebrecht and Vale’s longer-standing ties to members of the ruling party meant that they operated far more independently from the Brazilian state (Soares de Oliveira 2015; Capi and Viana 2016; Alencastro 2019). However, over time, Odebrecht’s role in driving infrastructure projects in Tanzania became more prominent. The company chose to open an office in Dar es Salaam and engaged in regular meetings from 2011. Their efforts brokered an agreement on the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam with the responsible government Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA). In 2012, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two gave Odebrecht responsibility for the project’s construction, with a first step of producing an updated feasibility and design report whilst RUBADA would undertake an environmental impact assessment (EIA). A further future EIA was envisioned that would meet the criteria of the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), given how the Stiegler’s Gorge project resides in the Selous UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition, the company, without the initiation of Itamaraty or a high-level visit, also entered discussions over the construction of a larger airport at Mtwara, the base for Tanzania’s new offshore gas industry. This would facilitate the dam project by increasing staff in the country and by building experience of operating in Tanzania. Odebrecht therefore began talks with the Ministries of Finance and Works to pursue the airport. Odebrecht’s independent actions in Tanzania also included their attempts to secure UNESCO’s approval for the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam. The company faced a similar obstacle when working on a viaduct bridge construction project that would damage the Viejo Cultural World Heritage Site in Panama City. Odebrecht helped circumvent the committee’s objections through the production of extensive reports about the road’s ability to enhance the site (something the UNESCO secretariat derided) and through supporting extensive lobbying efforts on the committee’s constituent national representatives (Meskell 2018, 103–108). In Tanzania, Odebrecht proposed sanitising the dam by creating an additional levy on the hydroelectric plant’s tariff. With the dam’s feasibility assessment indicating a price of $0.0435 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), below the national average of $.065 kWh, an additional cent ($0.01) could be added and reserved for a ring-fenced Selous

21

 Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

83

conservation fund (Odebrecht 2013).22 In addition, Odebrecht started soliciting finance for the dam. With the project envisaged as an independent power plant (IPP) between 2005 and 2015, Odebrecht and RUBADA were made responsible for securing finance for construction. Reportedly, Odebrecht began approaching partners for such funds, including the World Bank,23 European development banks24 and, with the support of the Brazilian ambassador,25 the Canadian government. Although with continued background support from Brazilian diplomats in Tanzania, these initiatives again underline the role of Odebrecht itself as an important actor advancing projects in Africa. Indeed, Odebrecht was particularly capable of undertaking this scale of dam building, as it led the consortium to construct the similarly sized ~2100 MW Lauca Dam in Angola. 3.2.2  Queiroz Galvão in Tanzania A similar pattern emerged with another Brazilian company, Queiroz Galvão. Whilst they had not come on President Lula’s 2010 trip, they agreed to an MoU with RUBADA in 2012 to build another hydropower project, the Mnyera Dam. They set up an office earlier than Odebrecht and conducted feasibility and construction studies in 2012. This included a redesign of the project to increase its hydropower capacity, entailing a large dam at the top of a cascade of six run-of-the-river hydropower stations. Collectively, Mnyera hydropower project is projected to produce a maximum of 670 MW, with the large upstream reservoir regulating flow to reduce seasonal fluctuation in power production (Construtora Queiroz Galvão 2012). Queiroz Galvão paid for hydrological research from 2013 to 2017 in order to underpin feasibility studies.26 They also spent money on an EIA for the dam that was completed in 2014 and approved by the Tanzanian environmental regulator.27 This underlines the degree to which Queiroz Galvão invested in this Tanzanian infrastructure project from an early stage. And like Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão additionally entered negotiations over an airport to build Tanzanian experience and increased the number of staff in the country. They were interested in airport expansion at Dodoma, officially the country’s capital city.28 Using their European subsidiary company, Queiroz Galvão also began to actively solicit finance for this

 Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016.  Interview, senior official, World Bank, 2017. 24  Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016. 25  Interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016. 26  Interview, senior official, Queiroz Galvão, 2016. 27  Interviews, official, RUBADA, 2016–2015; the regulator being NEMC. 28  Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016; interview, senior and junior officials, Itamaraty, 2015–2016. 22 23

84

B. J. Dye

dam. Reportedly, this included meetings with the United Kingdom’s export credit agency.29 So far, these sections highlight the importance of the Brazilian government and of the infrastructure companies in forging increased ties with Africa. However, this group of actors was unable to move the dam and airport projects to implementation. To understand this, the chapter analyses the other important set of actors in Brazil-­Tanzania relations in greater detail, that is, the Tanzanians. The following section demonstrates the way in which their role was often misread, using this to explain how Brazilian naivety contributed to the downturn in BrazilAfrica ties.

3.3  Misreading the Tanzanian State The downturn in Brazil-Tanzania ties was strongly influenced by conventional factors highlighted in the literature above. Changes of the Brazilian president, and their degree of power, mattered, especially in Brazil, where lessening interest decreased the amount of high-level diplomatic support and resources. Additionally, the worsening global economic climate contributed to Petrobras reducing its investment and activity in Tanzania. Equally, the analysis below demonstrates the significance of the Brazilian Congress’ blocking debt relief until 2017 as this prevented access to Brazilian subsidised credit by BNDES. However, the other crucial factor behind the trajectory of the countries’ ties was the way in which Brazilian governmental and corporate actors failed to appreciate Tanzanian agency. Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão and, to a lesser extent, Brazilian diplomats tended to see themselves as primary drivers and thereby as capable of overcoming blocks to implementation. In terms of gaining further support from the Tanzanian government, both the Stiegler’s Gorge and Mnyera stalled by 2014. Whilst Stiegler’s Gorge and Mnyera were prioritised as medium-term (5  year) projects in the 2009 and 2012 power system master plans (United Republic of Tanzania 2009, 2013), in the 2016 master plan (United Republic of Tanzania 2016), both dams were pushed into a longer 10-year planning horizon. This lowered status began in 2012, with a new Minister for Energy and Minerals, Dr. Sospeter Muhongo, preferring fossil fuels: as one informant from 2012 stated, ‘the minister [of energy was] oppose to hydropower’.30 He publicly asserted that gas was the priority energy generation technology, followed by coal and then hydropower (Makoye 2015). In meetings with Brazilian counterparts, he reportedly had little interest in either the Stiegler’s Gorge or Mnyera Dams. This contrasted with the former minister of energy, who expressed broad support (Dye 2018, chapter 7). Additionally, in 2012, deep-sea exploration found significant reserves of natural gas. Consequently, ‘people started saying why

29 30

 Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016; interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016.  Interview, senior official, Itamaraty, 2016.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

85

are you going ahead (with the Stiegler’s Gorge when we have gas)?’.31 This point was made especially pertinent by the frequent blackouts experienced in Tanzania during droughts, where insufficient rainfall caused a shortfall in hydropower (United Republic of Tanzania 2016). Such droughts worsened during the 2000s and 2010s, creating scepticism about further dam building (Dye and Hartmann 2017). Rather than investing in hydropower then, the national energy utility Tanesco built gas plants at Ubungo,32 Tegeta33 and Kinyerezi.34 Overlooking this weakening interest and scant evidence of substantive support, Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão appeared to believe that the official development plans amounted to concrete action plans. More than that, they trusted assurances made in high-level meetings. One common refrain cited during interviews to demonstrate Tanzanian interest pointed to the president’s desire to implement the hydropower projects (e.g. ‘Kikwete keen on hydropower’35). Equally, meetings held with RUBADA and in the ministries where the dams and/or airports were discussed were claimed to be proof of intent in interviews. Crucial significance was also ascribed to the initial engagements between senior Tanzanian officials and Brazilian politicians and company representatives between 2010 and 2012. Indeed, senior Tanzanian officials were also responsible for bringing in the two Brazilian companies. As noted above, President Kikwete raised energy and infrastructure projects with the Brazilian ambassador, and reportedly, President Magufuli specifically brought up Stiegler’s Gorge with the new ambassador in 2016, saying ‘oh this is a very fundamentally important project for us, pivotal for us’.36 After President Lula’s 2010 visit, Tanzania’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Membe, reaffirmed interest with a trip to Brazil. This was followed by Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda, whose visit specifically focused on dam infrastructure,37 including the head of RUBADA and Energy Minister William Ngeleja in the delegation. President Kikwete also advanced Brazil-Tanzania ties by making a trip in 2012: ‘Kikwete went to Brazil and he went to meet these companies (…) he brought Queiroz Galvão’,38 inviting them to undertake studies and preparation for the Mnyera Dam as well as discussing the Stiegler’s Gorge and other energy, agriculture and mining projects.39 Thus, when asked about the dams’ implementation issues, interviewed officials did not blame decreased governmental interest. Rather, they primarily cited problems with RUBADA, the institution responsible for developing dams in the Rufiji Basin. Typically, such Brazilian officials highlighted the organisation’s  Interview, senior official, Itamaraty, 2016.  Ubungo I (2009); Ubungo II (2012). 33  Tegeta Gas (2009). 34  Kinyerezi I (2015); Kinyerezi II (2018). 35  Interview, senior official, Queiroz Galvão, 2016. 36  Interview, senior diplomat, Itamaraty, 2016. 37  For instance, visiting the Itaipu Dam, Odebrecht offices and the Ministry of Energy. 38  Interview, senior official, Itamaraty, 2016. 39  Interview, senior official, Queiroz Galvão, 2016. 31 32

86

B. J. Dye

extremely limited capacity, signified by the fact that they only had one key qualified engineer. As a hamstrung institution, RUBADA relied on companies to advance their projects and needed the Ministry of Energy’s permission to sign deals. Additionally, given its incapacity, RUBADA was unable to uphold its side of the dam deals, requiring the two Brazilian companies to spend money on studies and reports. Indeed, Odebrecht ‘realise[d] that the client [RUBADA] does not have the know-how or technical ability to do these studies’ (as agreed in the MoU). Thus, Odebrecht paid a local company to produce the initial EIA but then ‘[had to] hand it to another group of 20 people in Brazil at our headquarters to improve the document created by the local company’. In RUBADA’s absence, both firms realised the key power to advance their power purchase agreements for the dams or allocate preparatory funding, laid with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals. Here, the scepticism of the aforementioned 2012–2015 and 2015–2017 Minister of Energy and Minerals Sospeter Muhongo was noted, particularly in contrast to his predecessor: ‘there was a minister not keen on hydropower’;40 now, ‘have a minister oppose to hydropower!’.41 One official reported the contrast between positive meetings with this minister when he bought a senior company executive over from Brazil, only for little action to follow. However, none of the interviewed officials saw Minister Muhongo as an immovable block, believing that the Tanzanian government wanted this project to go ahead. Officials counted on the validity of publicly proclaimed infrastructure and development plans, seeing this as proof that their projects would ultimately prevail. One stated that ‘I can feel and see the possibilities of many projects to be implemented (…) with the industrialisation agenda of the new government. [Unlike] Brazil in the 80s going around in circles, hopeless at building infrastructure (…) not like Tanzania. The agenda of the new government [is rooted in an] (…) understanding of the lack of infrastructure’.42 This led to a belief amongst company officials and involved diplomats that the large hydropower dams had to ‘accompany industrialisation’43 and that the Tanzanian state would support dam building. Evidence from the last two decades questions this understanding of Tanzanian politics, particularly when applied to public-private infrastructure deals. Until 2018, the only electricity projects to have progressed are the government-owned thermal plants cited above and two corrupt private sector plants: the Richmond-Dowans plant involved in a 2009 scandal and Independent Power Tanzania Ltd. (IPTL), which has been involved in numerous rounds of corruption as it slowly progressed and changed ownership from the 1990s to the 2010s (Gray 2015). The exception is the Songo Songo gas project, although (perhaps as a result of being less corrupt) it suffered a 13-year-long negotiation. Numerous other private sector-led projects were listed by the government between 2009 and 2016 covering gas, coal, wind and

 Interview, senior official, Queiroz Galvão, 2016.  Interview, senior and junior officials, Itamaraty, 2015–2016. 42  Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016. 43  Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016; interview, senior officials, Itamaraty, 2015–2016. 40 41

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

87

hydropower generation technologies (United Republic of Tanzania 2016). The closest to get to implementation, with finalised agreements and some degree of secured financing, were the Ruhudji, Malagarasi and Kakono dams and Kinyerezi III and IV gas plants. However, none reached construction. This indicates the Tanzanian government’s limited ability to support private sector projects through implementation and the difficulties faced by the Brazilian companies in implementing their own dams. Such projects require multiple legal agreements from different government agencies, most central of which is the power purchase agreement with Tanesco. However, even with this achieved, Tanesco’s low credit rating – stemming from its history of not paying the aforementioned IPPs44 – requires investors to get further government guarantees in order to raise the necessary finance for construction. This was particularly problematic for the Brazilian companies, as, until 2017, Tanzania’s outstanding debt to Brazil ruled out the extension of government finance through an export credit agency like BNDES, the bank which had unlocked other projects including the Lauca Dam in Angola. This latter point reinforces the importance of the political structural constraint of Brazil’s fragmented Congress, which failed to sign off on Tanzania’s debt relief. Brazilian actors appear to have misread these hurdles in their pursuit of dams. A key reason behind the lack of power project construction was the deep divisions in Tanzania’s ruling party that prevented the necessary joined-up decision-making across government. Such divisions have their roots in the shift towards a private sector-led economy that began in 1985 and were furthered with the transition to democracy in 1995 (Coulson 2013). Both changes lessened party discipline and the hard separation of politics from business (Collord 2018). Thus, political office was increasingly used as a business platform to capture contracts, engage in grand corruption and carve out protected economic monopolies for self-enrichment and political finance (Gray 2015). Indiscipline over such practices, alongside competition for rent seeking, increasingly fractured the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party into rival groups that occupied different ministries, especially during Kikwete’s 2006–2015 tenure (Gray 2015; Collord 2018). Consequently, cohesive policymaking of the type required to support private sector investment, particularly on the scale needed for dams, was absent. Moreover, the lack of central coordination and intra-­ party competition meant that ministers were particularly powerful. Thus, even if President Kikwete supported the Mnyera or Stiegler’s Gorge projects, his ability to advance them was limited, especially when a hydro-sceptic Minister of Energy was in post. In contrast to the Brazilian firms, other companies recognised this. For instance, Aldwych, a British energy firm, realised that its Ruhudji project was all but shelved in 2012.45 Whilst continuing to monitor the situation, they withdrew from further substantive action. Sinohydro, after completing studies of the Mpanga Dam by 2012, also took no further steps. Advisory consultants, finding none of their clients

44 45

 Namely, the Richmond-Dowans, ITPL, Songas plants.  Interview, senior official, Aldwych, 2016.

88

B. J. Dye

successful in electricity projects, reported in interviews that they tell clients to avoid investment until substantive, legal government support was given. Brazilian companies and diplomats therefore seem to have misunderstood policymaking in Tanzania by underestimating the disconnects within government. In particular, they did not appear to grasp the extent of disconnect between stated policies and actual implementation. Rather, there was a belief that if the president invited a company in and if certain high-level meetings were positive, the Tanzanian state (assumed to be a unitary body) wanted implementation. Ultimately, the necessary support would prevail. This apparent naivety could be rooted in the companies’ experiences with other countries in Africa. For instance, Odebrecht’s major work in Africa is in Mozambique and Angola, highly centralised and strongly presidential governments with more pyramidal systems of decision-making. There, if the president and senior officials approve a project, it is more likely to indicate support across the state and carry through to decision-making throughout government and its agencies. Given that Tanzania also follows an authoritarian model of holding elections with a dominant ruling party, Brazilian actors could have assumed that the Tanzanian state functioned in a similarly pyramidal way. The reality, in contrast, was a fractured government of powerful ministries and ministers. Another instance of seeming short-sightedness concerned Odebrecht’s belief that it could gain UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) approval for the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam. The project will lie in the heart of this protected reserve, flooding over 3% of its area. More importantly, it will entail significant downstream effects for its key ecological area. A number of different studies by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (Dye and Hartmann 2017) and by academics modelling potential flood releases (Duvail et al. 2014) show that the infrastructure will have inevitable trade-offs with the marshland area immediately below the Stiegler’s Gorge. This area is the reserve’s most biodiverse habitat and also its main tourist site. The dam will also undermine the biophysical processes sustaining agriculture and fishing downstream and the ecology of the Ramsar-protected river delta. Construction, by bringing in constant traffic and workers, will itself entail risks concerning poaching, logging and pollution in the reserve. Although such risks were established by past environmental impact studies in the 1980s and consistently cited in monitoring reports by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Odebrecht officials refuted the idea of fundamental trade-offs: ‘I believe there is a good chance [of the EIA gaining approval] (…) the few conversations I have seen show that there is a good understanding of the positives [amongst the WHC]’. ‘Careful attention’ such as a ‘conscious drive on anti-poaching [would] (…) minimise impacts and create benefits [to the park]’.46 In contrast, UNESCO’s WHC has issued strongly worded statements since 2012 (e.g. UNESCO WHC 2018), and reactive monitoring missions have made stark warnings of the risks of the dam (Jaeger et  al. 2014). Since President Magufuli’s attempts to construct

46

 Interview, senior official, Odebrecht, 2016.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

89

Stiegler’s Gorge Dam, opposition has increased, as exemplified by the official warnings given by the IUCN and UNESCO (UNESCO WHC 2018). Odebrecht’s calculation around UNESCO and the Selous therefore indicates another way in which Brazilian actors seem to have overestimated the ease of implementing projects in Tanzania whilst also misreading the politics involved in undertaking their activities. Collectively, this suggests that Brazilian actors were naive in their engagement with Tanzania. They overestimated the openness of doing business in the country and the degree to which formal institutions and official communications could be trusted. The obstacles presented by the government’s fragmented policymaking, particularly for private sector projects, were not sufficiently understood nor was the international sensitivity around the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam. However, rather than acknowledging this, interviewees cited above blamed blockages on specific Tanzanian government agencies  – frequently RUBADA – or the withdrawal of support from Brazil. As one explained, Brazilian infrastructure projects had not been implemented because ‘after Lula, there was a loss of interest (in the Brazil-Africa policy) (…) I think at the end of the Lula [era], government [was] completely overstretched. Announcing too many projects and not being able to implement them’. This point is further reinforced by the latest developments under current President Magufuli (2015–…). He stopped a drift towards gas generation, and by firing Minister Muhongo in 2017 and abolishing RUBADA, the President delegated development of the Stiegler’s Gorge Dam to a trusted minister, Medard Kalemani.47 From this point, the government actively pursued Stiegler’s Gorge Dam, even making it a flagship project (Luhwago 2017). This time, the government plans to finance the dam itself through the national budget, which can speed up implementation and allows pronouncements by UNESCO’s WHC to be ignored. However, this latest progress also sidelined Odebrecht. The company entered the bidding rounds in 2018 and 2019, making it to the second round in 2019.48 Despite the company having the most knowledge about the project, including its preparation of detailed feasibility, design and EIA reports, the Tanzanian government appointed an Egyptian consortium made of Arab contractors to lead civil works and El Sweeney, for the electromechanical works. This is deeply surprising as seemingly neither contractor has any experience leading dam design and construction.49 For Odebrecht to be frozen out of this process, despite their prior position of strength, reinforces the impression of their inability to form alliances with key brokers and to read Tanzanian politics and decision-making processes. Again, this suggests Odebrecht’s inability to read and manage Tanzanian politics.

 From the same constituency as the president and reportedly a family relation.  Personal correspondence, Academics, December, 2018, and February, 2019. 49  See https://www.arabcont.com/English/. 47 48

90

B. J. Dye

4  Conclusion Through the case study of Tanzania, this chapter has demonstrated how a combination of drivers pushed Brazil’s dramatic see-saw trajectory and why it retreated beyond lusophone Africa so dramatically. The commodity price downturn reduced the attractiveness of investments in natural resources and governments’ budgets. However, the chapter also identifies particular Brazilian weaknesses. One of these stems from the structural political issues of Brazil’s fragmented Congress. It hampered debt relief for countries in Africa, thereby blocking access to concessional finance. Typically, such BNDES finance was an important key to unlock economically risky infrastructure, as was the case in Tanzania. Equally, the influence of presidents is noticeable. President Dilma’s lesser prioritisation of Africa decreased South-South cooperation spending and decreased the supportive presidential diplomacy that had previously driven Africa ties, especially beyond a lusophone core. Allocation of resources and support for relations with Africa have further decreased with Presidents Temer and Bolsonaro. This degree of presidentialism in foreign policy creates a structural weakness in terms of building ‘new’ international relations. In addition, Brazilian companies were key agents in themselves. But such agency and structure factors do not sufficiently explain why Brazil’s Tanzania relations suffered to the extent they have. The steep decline differs from other countries in Africa. European finance and other investment sources could have plausibly offered a way of implementing Odebrecht and Queiroz Galvão’s infrastructure projects. Therefore, this chapter argues that, given the degree of presidential diplomacy and the resources of the Brazilian government and companies, one could expect more successfully implemented projects. To understand their failure requires appreciation of an additional weakness, here conceptualised as naivety, which describes Brazilian actors’ misreading of policymaking and politics in Tanzania. Brazil’s diplomats and companies did not appear to fully appreciate the priorities and processes of the relevant Tanzanian politicians and civil servants. Nor did they appear to have access to expertise that could have given them a more critical appraisal of decision-making. Assuming that their experience in Mozambique and Angola could serve as a guide, they also failed to appreciate the weakness and fragmentation of the Tanzanian regime and the effect this had on policymaking. Collectively and in contrast to other companies in the energy sector, Brazilian firms appear to have misread the policymaking process to a greater extent. Thus, this chapter argues that the concept of naivety makes a useful contribution to understanding the foreign relations of Brazil in Africa and perhaps emerging powers more widely. Along with other structural and personality factors, it explains the rapidity of Brazil’s decline in engagements in the continent and its lack of embeddedness beyond a lusophone core. In making this point, the chapter also contributes to two debates about emerging powers in Africa. One is the role of African agency in determining foreign relations, as this case evidences Tanzanian’s crucial role in shaping Brazil-Tanzanian outcomes. Additionally, the

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

91

case demonstrates the significance of companies and corporate agency in the foreign policy of emerging powers in Africa, which the literature has not always given sufficient recognition to. Although the Brazilian state was the primary actor pioneering and supporting relations in Tanzania, both firms did play an important role here in advancing each project and investing in construction preparations. Finally, in drawing this chapter to a conclusion, it is worth reflecting on how the boom and bust looks in retrospect. Certainly, in non-lusophone countries like Tanzania, Brazil’s presence as a serious international partner appears more of a blip. This is also arguably true of those states who saw more successful relations like Ghana, given the current near absence of Brazil firms and closure of development cooperation projects in that country. Without causing significant ill will towards itself, there is little evidence of a longer-lasting Brazilian impact beyond lusophone Africa. It seems unlikely that this will change in the future. The Lula era’s inability to address underlying structural weaknesses meant that it did not set up Brazilian companies and NGOs for a renaissance. Rather, in countries like Tanzania, Brazilian actors will be essentially starting from scratch. Prerequisites to future engagement would likely include a sustained programme of subsidised governmental credit and a development cooperation agency that is more independent, legally institutionalised and bureaucratically capable, as this would allow it to sustain projects to build in-country experience. However, under present circumstances, a renewed African agenda looks unlikely. For Tanzania, any country that can provide finance and support for President Magufuli’s agenda of infrastructure building and industrialisation would in all probability be welcome. Bolsonaro, conversely, looks uniquely unsuited to engagements based on listening to the aspirations of African leaders, especially given his relatively singular foreign policy position seemingly focused on the person of President Trump. More potential therefore likely resides in the interests of the activities of other parts of the state and private sector. Here, the fact that key companies are still reeling from the Car Wash scandal and economic travails of the last 5 years limits potential. Despite that, strategic interests in the Atlantic for trade and security could lead to some activity, particularly given the military’s current prominence in federal government. Additionally, the longer history and greater embeddedness of Brazilian actors in lusophone Africa should mean ties continue there to some extent, regardless of changing political tides. However, with the current Covid-19 crisis undermining global engagement and particularly affecting Brazil, a return to the 2000s’ boom appears far-off.

References Agência Brasileira de Cooperação. 2010. Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa. Brasilia: ABC. Alencastro, Mathias. 2019. Brazilian corruption overseas: The case of Odebrecht in Angola. In Corruption in Latin America: How politicians and corporations steal from citizens, ed. Robert Rotberg, 109–123. Cham: Springer.

92

B. J. Dye

Cabral, Lidia. 2016. Brazil’s tropical solutions for Africa: Tractors, matracas and the politics of ‘appropriate technology’. The European Journal of Development Research 28: 414–443. Capi, Eliza, and Natália Viana. 2016. Em Angola, a Odebrecht no espelho. Publica, February 22. https://apublica.org/2016/02/em-angola-a-odebrecht-no-espelho/. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. Carmody, Pádraig. 2013. The rise of the BRICS in Africa: The geopolitics of south-south relations. London/New York: Zed Books. Cezne, Eric. 2019. Forging transnational ties from below: Challenging the Brazilian mining giant Vale S.A. across the South Atlantic. The Extractive Industries and Society 6 (4): 1174–1183. Collord, Michaela. 2018. The political economy of institutions in Africa: Comparing authoritarian parties and parliaments in Tanzania and Uganda. PhD dissertation, Oxford: University of Oxford. Construtora Queiroz Galvão. 2012. Mnyera River-Tanzania: Implementation of hydroelectric developments; technical preliminary feasibility studies. Rio de Janeiro: Construtora Queiroz Galvão. Coulson, Andrew. 2013. Tanzania: A political economy. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duvail, S., A.B.  Mwakalinga, A.  Eijkelenburg, O.  Hamerlynck, K.  Kindinda, and A.  Majule. 2014. Jointly thinking the post-dam future: Exchange of local and scientific knowledge on the lakes of the Lower Rufiji, Tanzania. Hydrological Sciences Journal 59 (3–4): 713–730. Dye, Barnaby Joseph. 2018. The politics of dam resurgence: High modernist statebuilding and the emerging powers in Africa. PhD dissertation, Oxford: University of Oxford. Dye, Barnaby Joseph, and Mathias Alencastro. 2020. Debunking Brazilian exceptionalism in its Africa relations: Evidence from Angola and Tanzania. Global Society. https://doi.org/10.1080 /13600826.2020.1722617. Dye, Barnaby Joseph, and Joerg Hartmann. 2017. The true cost of power: The facts and risks of building the Stiegler’s Gorge hydropower dam in the Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania. Gland: World Wildlife Fund International. Garcia, Ana, and Karina Kato. 2015. The story of hunter and the hunted? Brazil’s role in Angola and Mozambique. In BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique, ed. Patrick Bond and Ana Garcia, 117–134. London: Pluto Press. Gray, Hazel. 2015. The political economy of grand corruption in Tanzania. African Affairs 114 (456): 382–403. Hochstetler, Kathryn. 2014. The Brazilian National Development Bank goes international: Innovations and limitations of BNDES’ internationalization. Global Policy 5 (3): 360–365. Hochstetler, Kathryn, and Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue. 2019. South-south relations and global environmental governance: Brazilian international development cooperation. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 62 (2). https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201900204. Jaeger, Tilman, Guy Debonnet, and Nelson Guma. 2014. Reactive monitoring mission Selous Game Reserve (United Republic of Tanzania). UNESCO World Heritage Centre – IUCN. Limongi, Fernando. 2006. A democracia no Brasil: presidencialismo, coalizão partidária e processo decisório. Novos Estudos CEBRAP 76: 17–41. Luhwago, Rodgers. 2017. JPM snubs Stiegler’s critics. Daily News, June 29. Makoye, Kizito. 2015. As hydropower dries up, Tanzania moves toward fossil fuels. Reuters, December 29. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-hydropower-drought/as-hydropower-dries-up-tanzania-moves-toward-fossil-fuels-idUSKBN0UC0SS20151229. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. Marcondes, Danilo, and Emma Mawdsley. 2017. South–south in retreat? The transitions from Lula to Rousseff to Temer and Brazilian development cooperation. International Affairs 93 (3): 681–699. Mawdsley, Emma, Sung-Mi Kim, and Danilo Marcondes. 2017. Political leadership and ‘non-­ traditional’ development cooperation. Third World Quarterly 38 (10): 2171–2186. Meskell, Lynn. 2018. A future in ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brazil’s Boom and Bust in Tanzania: A Case Study of Naivety?

93

Mohan, Giles, and Ben Lampert. 2013. Negotiating China: Reinserting African agency into China-­ Africa relations. African Affairs 112 (446): 92–110. Odebrecht. 2013. Stiegler’s Gorge HPP: Presentation of report and proposal. Dar es Salaam: Odebrecht. Power, Marcus, Giles Mohan, and May Tan-Mullins. 2012. China’s resource diplomacy in Africa: Powering development? Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reuters. 2018. UPDATE 1-Petrobras to sell stake in Africa unit to Vitol-led group for $1.5 bln. Reuters, October 31. https://www.reuters.com/article/petrobras-divestiture/update-1-petrobras-to-sell-stake-in-africa-unit-to-vitol-led-group-for-1-5-bln-idUSL2N1XB2CR. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. Seibert, Gerhard. 2019a. Brazil-Africa relations from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. In Brazil-Africa relations: Historical dimensions and contemporary engagements from the 1960s to the present, ed. Gerhard Seibert and Paulo Visentini, 11–46. Suffolk: James Currey. ———. 2019b. Brazil’s development and financial cooperation with African countries. In Brazil-­ Africa relations: Historical dimensions and contemporary engagements from the 1960s to the present, ed. Gerhard Seibert and Paulo Visentini, 99–130. Suffolk: James Currey. Seibert, Gerhard, and Paulo Visentini. 2019. Brazil-Africa relations after Lula: Continuity without priority. In Brazil-Africa relations: Historical dimensions and contemporary engagements from the 1960s to the present, ed. Gerhard Seibert and Paulo Visentini, 197–220. Suffolk: James Currey. Soares de Oliveira, Ricardo. 2015. Magnificent and beggar land: Angola since the civil war. London: Hurst & Company. Standard Bank. 2017. BRICS 2017: Poised for new relevance. Standard Bank. https://sponsorships.standardbank.com/CIB/About-us/Insights-Hub/BRICS-2017:-poised-for-new-relevance. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. Stolte, Christina. 2015. Brazil’s Africa strategy: Role conception and the drive for international status. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stratfor. 2017. Brazil and Africa bridge the South Atlantic. Stratfor, July 27. https://worldview. stratfor.com/article/brazil-and-africa-bridge-south-atlantic. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. teleSUR. 2019. Brazil closes 5 Caribbean embassies citing costs and staffing. teleSUR, June 5. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Brazil-Closes-5-Caribbean-Embassies-Citing-Costs-andStaffing-20190605-0023.html. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. The Economist. 2017. Brazil puts its state development bank on a diet. The Economist, November 30. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/11/30/brazil-puts-its-statedevelopment-bank-on-a-diet. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. UNESCO WHC. 2018. UNESCO expresses concern over the state of conservation of Selous Game Reserve. UNESCO, February 22. https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1785. Accessed 15 Jan 2020. United Republic of Tanzania, Ministry of Energy and Minerals. 2009. Power system master plan, 2009. Dar es Salaam: Ministry of Energy and Minerals. ———. 2013. Power system master plan 2012 update. Dar es Salaam: Ministry of Energy and Minerals. ———. 2016. Power system master plan 2016 update. Dar es Salaam: Ministry of Energy and Minerals. Whitfield, Lindsay, and Alistair Fraser. 2009. Negotiating aid. In The politics of aid: African strategies for dealing with donors, ed. Lindsay Whitfield, 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Food Programme. 2017. New project promotes cooperation between Brazil and Africa in the cotton sector. WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger, October 6. https://centrodeexcelencia.org.br/en/new-project-promotes-cooperation-brazil-africa-cotton-sector/. Accessed 15 Jan 2020.

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical Production in Mozambique Danilo Marcondes

1  Introduction The expansion of Brazil-Africa relations after the January 2003 inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of Brazil included many areas, such as agriculture, education, health and defence cooperation. The present chapter looks at Brazil’s partnership with Mozambique to initiate the public production of antiretrovirals (ARVs), via the transfer of technology and the creation of a public factory for pharmaceutical production. The factory, officially registered as Mozambican Medicines Society (SMM –Sociedade Moçambicana de Medicamentos)1 is one of many projects that Brazil has developed in the health sector as part of its South-­ South development cooperation portfolio. Nonetheless, it has been singled out due to its highly symbolic nature, direct association with technology transfer, broad political impact and innovative character.2 The project was particularly important because of the “pioneering and hybrid nature of the initiative: in addition to being a technical cooperation project, it also included the implementation of a public company, operating in the pharmaceutical market, under regulation and certification requirements”.3 The story of the Brazil-Mozambique partnership for pharmaceutical production relates to broader dynamics associated with global health, including South-South technical cooperation in the health sector and the role of the state in the provision of health. 1  According to Rodrigues, the SMM was constituted in January 2009, and the company’s statute was published in the Mozambican Bulletin of the Republic (Boletim da República), the country’s official ledger (2014: 15). 2  Interview with Brazilian diplomat, Brasília, 6/08/2013. 3  Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 06/05/2011.

D. Marcondes (*) Brazilian War College (ESG – Escola Superior de Guerra), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_7

95

96

D. Marcondes

The analysis presented here is based on fieldwork in Maputo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Geneva between 2012 and 2016 and in Brasília and Maputo in 2019. Brazilian diplomatic documentation, obtained via Access to Information requests, was also used.4 Access to official documents, as well as fieldwork which included interviews and an on-site visit to the SMM, was crucial to bring into the analysis the nuances associated with how Brazilian and Mozambican actors and institutions understood and negotiated their involvement in the partnership project. The chapter is divided in the following sections: (1)  Introduction, (2) a brief discussion of the Brazilian domestic response in addressing HIV/AIDS, (3) Brazilian South-South health cooperation initiatives in HIV/AIDS and (4) Brazilian South-South cooperation and the ARV factory in Mozambique. The chapter finishes with a conclusion.

2  T  he Brazilian Domestic Response in Addressing HIV/ AIDS The first cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in Brazil in the early 1980s, following the initial identification of the disease in the United States in 1981. The recognition of the rights of those living with AIDS appeared in a “moment when the emergence of community responses to AIDS in Brazil was strongly characterized by social movements (among them the homosexual movement) that fought for redemocratization and the end of the military dictatorship that began in 1964” (Terto Jr 1999, 333). AZT (zidovudine), the first generation of ARVs, was initially purchased by the state of São Paulo in 1989 and distributed nationally in 1991 (Luz 2006, 149). Brazil’s successful strategy to address HIV/AIDS as a developing country rested in the combination of political will on the part of the authorities, civil society mobilization and the existence of a national public health system. The recognition of health as a right was incorporated into Brazil’s 1988 constitution, symbolically known as the “citizen’s constitution,” and inspired the creation of Brazil’s national health system, the Unified Health System (SUS – Sistema Único de Saúde), in 1990. Legislation enacted in 1996 made it mandatory for the SUS to distribute medication against HIV/AIDS (Galvão 2002, 214). Brazil became the first country of the Global South to enact such legislation, and at the time, the country “set the tone on how to address the disease” (Maia 2007a).

4  The chapter benefits from access to diplomatic communication exchanged between the General Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SERE - Secretaria de Estado das Relações Exteriores) within the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and different Brazilian embassies in Africa, particularly in Maputo (BRASEMB MAPUTO).

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

97

Brazil was able to defend the right to health and support the possibility of using compulsory licensing5 because of its well-developed pharmaceutical sector, which included Farmanguinhos, the largest official pharmaceutical laboratory linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ  – Fundação Oswaldo Cruz)6 capable of producing medication, if the need emerged. During the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), the government used the threat of compulsory licensing to negotiate a price reduction with the pharmaceutical companies without actually having to invoke compulsory licensing. Brazilian pharmaceutical policies were defended by Brazilian diplomats at the multilateral level. In May 2000, the Brazilian proposal for the recognition of access to drugs as a human right was accepted by the World Health Organization (WHO)‘s World Health Assembly (WHA) (Calcagnotto 2003, 266). In April 2001, the UN’s Human Rights Commission approved a resolution (“Access to Medication in the Context of Pandemics such as HIV/AIDS”) proposed by Brazil that recognized “access to medication as a fundamental element for the implementation of the human right to health”.7

3  B  razilian South-South Health Cooperation in Addressing HIV/AIDS The first South-South cooperation initiative to address HIV/AIDS in which Brazil became engaged was the Horizontal Technical Cooperation Group on HIV/AIDS (GCTH) created in 1996 within the framework of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). After this initial engagement with Latin America, Brazil sought to expand cooperation with African countries. Since the International AIDS Conference in Durban (South Africa) in 2000, Brazil had demonstrated its willingness to share the necessary technology to guarantee access to ARVs to developing countries. In spite of the Brazilian intention to promote technology transfer in ARV production, some African countries lack the infrastructure required to develop such activities. There are also more “subtle” factors that undermine the capacity of African countries to initiate these activities: some of these countries have been engaged in North-South aid initiatives that include either the purchase or donation of medication. These long-established patterns are sometimes difficult to abandon because of their broader political and economic connections, creating challenges to the successful implementation of local pharmaceutical production. 5  According to Decree 3201 of 1999, compulsory licensing was to be issued in “situations of national emergency and public interest.” The decree defined national emergency as “situations of imminent public danger” and public interest as “facts related to public health, nutrition, environmental protection as well as those deemed to be of primordial importance for the technological and socio-economic development of the country.” The decree is available in Portuguese at http://www. planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto/D3201.htm 6  FIOCRUZ is Brazil’s key public institution in research and training in the health sector. 7  See Access to Medication in the Context of Pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. CHR Res. 2001/33, UN Doc. E/CN.4/RES/2001/33 (2001).

98

D. Marcondes

It is important to look at different occasions in which Brazil offered assistance in ARV production to African countries because they illustrate some of the principles that underscore the Brazilian domestic response to HIV/AIDS. For example, during a 2000 visit to Brazil by South African President Thabo Mbeki, Brazilian Health Minister José Serra offered Brazilian assistance for ARV production in South Africa with “the condition that production be made by public laboratories and distributed free of charge to the population” (Luz 2006, 177). While Brazil offered technology transfer to address HIV/AIDS, cooperation with African countries was not always possible due to certain specific cultural, political and economic aspects of the countries involved. For example, a cooperation agreement on support for HIV/AIDS was ready to be signed between Brazil and Namibia in 2000, but the Brazilian National HIV/AIDS programme “decided not to go through because of Namibian President Sam Nujoma’s decision to arrest and deport homosexuals” (Luz 2006, 181). The example of the “frustrated” cooperation with Namibia shows that Brazilian health professionals were not willing to “sacrifice” the principles in which the Brazilian programme was based on, particularly non-­ discrimination and the empowerment of those affected by HIV/AIDS. Brazilian actors also identified the importance of combining Brazilian HIV/ AIDS cooperation with a mobilization at the multilateral level, which reinforced the principles defended by Brazil at the domestic level and as part of its South-South initiatives. In his May 2007 speech at the WHA, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim mentioned that “any technology and knowledge that we are able to develop, we will be pleased to share it with other countries, especially the poor nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America” (Amorim 2007). A key component of HIV/AIDS cooperation under President Lula involved offers to provide technical assistance for the production of ARVs. Lula made several promises related to the donation of pharmaceutical factories to Mozambique and to other African countries, particularly those in Southern Africa, the world’s region most affected by HIV/AIDS. While negotiations with Mozambican authorities were taking place, Amorim travelled to Zambia in 2008, when he mentioned the importance of the use of generic drugs to guarantee the success of Brazil’s domestic HIV/ AIDS programme and made reference to the process of implementation of the pharmaceutical factory in Mozambique as well as the Brazilian efforts to support innovative means to finance actions addressing HIV/AIDS.8 This illustrates that although there were challenges associated to the process of setting up the factory in Mozambique, which will be discussed in greater detail below, Brazilian actors made explicit references to the factory as an important foreign policy initiative that demonstrated the Brazilian commitment towards addressing HIV/AIDS in Africa. Interest in Brazilian cooperation on HIV/AIDS was not restricted to Southern Africa. Nigeria was one of the countries influenced by Brazilian cooperation with Mozambique. When greeting a technical mission from the Brazilian Ministry of Health in 2004, the Nigerian health minister stated his interest in cooperating with Brazil, “like it is being done with Mozambique”.9 Nigerian authorities were eager to  Information provided during interviews conducted by the author with officials working at the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brasília, January 2014. 9  Telegram 310 from BRASEMB LAGOS to SERE, date: 17/05/2004. 8

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

99

initiate cooperation with Brazil for the transfer of technology associated to ARV production. Nonetheless, Brazilian authorities had already anticipated the many challenges that this project would entail: In light of the difficulties that such an initiative entails, especially regarding financing of the specific processes associated with technology transfer (viability studies, expert missions, purchase of equipment and raw material) as well as the construction of the factory (...). As for cooperation to address HIV, it would be initiated by assistance in campaigns to promote awareness of HIV and support for those living with HIV/AIDS. The transfer of technology for ARV production and the construction of a factory would not be discarded but postponed for a future moment.10

The example of the relationship with Nigeria is important because of what it reveals of the Brazilian approach to cooperation for ARV production with African countries. By early 2004, it was likely that Brazilian government actors were already aware of the challenges associated with the implementation of the factory in Mozambique. Prior to making any commitments related to transferring technology and building a factory in Nigeria, Brazilian health authorities were interested in knowing more about the pharmaceutical context in Nigeria, especially as it applied to ARVs. It can be inferred that initial negotiations with Mozambican authorities, which will be addressed in this chapter, had given Brazilian authorities input over the complexity of transferring technology and building a factory overseas. Because of these considerations, Brazilian health officials were cautious about engaging in another project while still being involved in negotiations with Mozambique. The argument presented above shows the challenges faced by Brazilian actors regarding partnerships for ARV production in African countries. In the case of Nigeria, the Brazilian technical mission sent to the country in May 2004 identified that “Nigeria does not possess the minimum conditions for adequate manufacturing standards; the basic concept of quality control that is fundamental for pharmaceutical production is absent”.11 These challenges will become even more evident as the chapter contemplates the specificities of the partnership with Mozambique.

4  B  razilian South-South Cooperation and the ARV Factory in Mozambique 4.1  E  arly Brazilian Initiatives to Address HIV/AIDS in Mozambique Brazilian initiatives to address HIV/AIDS in Mozambique predate the beginning of the Lula administration. In May 2001, a delegation of Mozambican health officials visited Brazil to discuss areas of cooperation related to HIV/AIDS, including ­preventive measures, the export of ARVs and the production of ARVs.12 When  Telegraphic dispatch 4 from SERE to BRASEMB LAGOS, date: 12/01/2004.  Telegram 310 from BRASEMB LAGOS to SERE, date: 17/05/2004. 12  Telegram 314 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 16/05/2001 10 11

100

D. Marcondes

Mozambique started its “systematic treatment for HIV/AIDS” in November 2001, Brazilian diplomats in Maputo recommended a “sanitary undertaking,” so that Brazil could position itself as an important health partner for Mozambique. The diplomats, who suggested a visit to Maputo by Brazilian health officials and the possibility of Brazilian provision of ARVs to Mozambique, were particularly concerned with a potential comparison with India, which had boosted its bilateral health cooperation in HIV/AIDS.13 At the time, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry responded that “according to the Office of International Affairs of the [Brazilian] Ministry of Health, ARVs from the Brazilian national HIV/AIDS programme were destined only to Brazilian HIV positive patients and (…) could not be exported by the Brazilian government”.14 Nonetheless, this initial assessment from Maputo further echoed during the Lula administration, particularly in light of the aspirations to strengthen and deepen relations with the African continent.15 In anticipation of Minister Amorim’s May 2003 visit to Mozambique, the Brazilian Embassy in Maputo suggested the signing of a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) regarding the Brazilian Ministry of Health’s International Cooperation Programme.16 The document was signed on May 2,17 and during the visit, Amorim presented the idea of an ARV factory/laboratory to be implemented in Mozambique.18 After the signing of the MOU, the two sides begun to discuss the implementation of the initiative. In June 2003, the Mozambican Ministry of Health confirmed the interest in the implementation of the project.19 In order to discuss technical details of the implementation, Farmanguinhos sent a mission to Mozambique in late July 2003. The mission was the first concrete assessment of the local conditions to implement the project.20 The mission was particularly important to clarify some of the expectations shared by the Mozambican side. When Brazilian authorities mentioned the transfer of technology, referring to the transfer towards a Mozambican government institution that would produce ARVs and distribute them within the national health system, the Mozambican authorities had understood the Brazilian offer as indicating the involvement of Brazilian private investment to set up a factory that could be commercially exploited. The Farmanguinhos mission clarified the nature of the Brazilian offer, and Mozambican authorities did not consider this as an ­obstacle, but as a new factor that had to be taken into consideration.21 This example  Telegram 754 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 19/11/2001.  Telegraphic dispatch 497 from SERE to BRASEMB MAPUTO, date: 18/12/2001. 15  Telegraphic dispatch 213 from SERE to BRASEMB MAPUTO, date: 9/7/2003. 16  Telegram 246 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 25/04/2003. 17  Telegraphic dispatch 123 from SERE to BRASEMB MAPUTO, date: 23/4/2003. 18  Telegram 276 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 16/05/2003; Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 2/07/2003. 19  Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 2/07/2003. An analysis of Mozambican efforts to address HIV/AIDS up to the early 2000s is provided in Matsinhe (2006). 20  Telegram 692 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 21/10/2003. 21  Telegram 445 from BRASEMBMAPUTO to SERE, date: 25/07/2003. 13 14

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

101

of early Brazilian-Mozambican interaction illustrates the different perceptions regarding the nature of the initiative, specifically in relation to the Brazilian intentions. During President Lula’s visit to Mozambique in November 2003, the discussions about the implementation of the factory project were given new pace. Because of expectations associated with the factory, Brazilian diplomats in Maputo suggested that the visit could be used to boost health cooperation. During the visit, Brazil and Mozambique signed a Protocol of Intentions on Scientific and Technological Cooperation in the Health Sector. The Brazilian side identified the document as essential to begin the cooperation with Mozambique, particularly as part of an initiative with so many technicalities, especially the technology transfer component. In Maputo, Lula reinstated the Brazilian commitment when addressing the President of Mozambique: “President, I am more than certain that, in little time, someone from Brazil will come and help with the inauguration of this factory and begin to produce the drugs that all of Mozambique needs”.22 When mentioning the factory, Lula highlighted the element of solidarity and the Brazilian domestic experience in addressing HIV/AIDS: We in Brazil, thanks to God, managed to develop a bold and competent policy and we dominated the enemy. Obviously, a country with the solidarity spirit that Brazil has, we have to present to our brothers from other countries our successful experience (...). We will make the effort (...) so that we can get partners to build here a factory to produce the drugs required for the combination that has diminished the mortality in my country and that will certainly diminish it here. This is something urgent.23

Lula’s statement made a lasting impact on local actors, an indication of the high expectations that the initiative was generating. According to Brazilian diplomats, former Mozambican Prime Minister Mário Machungo24 stated the following regarding Lula’s visit: (…) what made the most impact in the general population was the announcement of the ARV factory. The people understood that Brazil was not like other partners, interested in increasing its leadership or teaching the country what had to be done, but a brother who really understood and was concerned with Mozambique. The support for the ARV factory will be the most eloquent and concrete confirmation that, as President Lula stated, the cooperation with Brazil will take place between equal partners, without the legacy of paternalism or the search for hegemony that characterizes Mozambican partnerships with developed countries.25

 “Palavras do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, na visita ao Hospital Central de Maputo,” November 62,003. 23  “Palavras do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, na visita ao Hospital Central de Maputo,” November 62,003. 24  Machungo served as prime minister of Mozambique between 1986 and1994. 25  Telegram 780 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 18/11/2003. 22

102

D. Marcondes

4.2  The Negotiations Associated with the Factory The period that followed Lula’s 2003 visit involved intense negotiations about the details related to the factory project (the location in Mozambique, the division of costs, the training of the workforce). These intense negotiations often took place during bilateral presidential visits. The visits were important because they offered the Brazilian side an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the implementation of the project. During Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano’s 2004 visit to Brazil, President Lula reaffirmed Brazil’s commitment to “cover all the costs associated with the technical and financial feasibility studies related to the laboratory for the production of ARVs and other medication”.26 After Lula’s personal commitment to donate the factory to Mozambique, Brazilian health institutions, particularly FIOCRUZ and Farmanguinhos,27 had to follow with the necessary bureaucratic and institutional preparations. Bilateral negotiations took place in the period 2004–2005. During these negotiations, one particular episode raised the attention of Brazilian representatives in Maputo: the April 2004 announcement that a Chinese private company would build an ARV factory in Mozambique. The announcement was of particular concern since Mozambican authorities had not responded to several requests by Brazilian health officials regarding technical information that was required for the Brazilian factory project. The possibility of a Chinese factory, to be built with Mozambican and Italian partners, reflected “private interests on the part of Mozambican health officials, interests that were not contemplated in the project with the Brazilian government”.28 In spite of the concerns by Brazilian officials, the Chinese ARV factory was never built, but it served as an indication of diverging interests related to ARV production in Mozambique. Initial negotiations related to the SMM project were complemented in July 2005, with an agreement for the development of a viability study. The study itself took place between April 2006 and January 2007 and was made available in May 2007, suggesting the option of renovating an existing hospital serum bags factory that could be converted into a pharmaceutical company. This would represent the cheapest option at a total cost of US$nine million in comparison to building a new factory, which would have an estimated cost of US$23 million (Massingarrela 2009, 38). The SMM project also included the need to provide training to Mozambicans. In the beginning of July 2008, the Mozambican Deputy Health Minister, Aida Libombo, asked Brazilian diplomats in Maputo to expedite the inauguration of the FIOCRUZ office in the city, which the authorities identified as essential for the implementation of the project.29 In the same year, an agreement for the provision of  See “Visita Oficial ao Brasil do Presidente de Moçambique, Joaquim Alberto Chissano  – Comunicado Conjunto.” Resenha de Política Exterior do Brasil 95, second semester 2004. 27  Telegram 296 from BRASEMBMAPUTO to SERE, date: 12/04/2004. 28  Telegram 296 from BRASEMBMAPUTO to SERE, date: 12/04/2004. 29  Telegram 515 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 02/07/2008. 26

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

103

ARV production capacity was signed in order to capacitate Mozambican staff that would eventually work in the SMM. At the same time, the lack of legal backing for Brazilian involvement in technical cooperation projects, particularly regarding the allocation of financial resources abroad, delayed the steps required for setting up the SMM. Specific legislation had to be approved by the Brazilian Congress to allocate resources related to the Brazilian participation in the factory. According to the draft of the law, the Brazilian government was authorized to donate financial resources of up to R$13,600,000 (approximately US$6 million, at the exchange rate in 2008) to Mozambique for the initial phase of the installation of the factory. The resources were expected to come from the budget of the Ministry of Health. The resources were needed because the Brazilian and Mozambican parties identified the need for renovations in the facilities of the serum bags factory. As of early 2009, a construction company had not been chosen to conduct the renovations, which were estimated at US$80,000.30 In April 2009, the Mozambican Minister of Health expressed concerns regarding delays in the training of Mozambican staff and in the construction work required before the installations were considered fit (meeting the standards of good pharmaceutical practice) for the installation of the equipment.31 Delays regarding Brazilian challenges in the provision of South-South cooperation – e.g. the allocation of Brazilian financial resources was only authorized by the Brazilian Congress in December 200932 – were not the only challenges faced by the actors involved. In April 2010, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry informed Brazilian diplomats in Maputo that the estimated date for the inauguration of the packing sector at the SMM would be December 2010. This would involve packing in Mozambique medications that had been produced in Brazil.33 By May 2010, Brazilian diplomats reported that the Mozambican side had not confirmed that it had the necessary resources for its share of the construction work required to adequate the factory facilities to accommodate the pharmaceutical production equipment donated by Brazil.34 In September 2010, a Brazilian Ministry of Health mission visited Mozambique. The visit was important because it allowed for the Brazilian ministry officials to have “a first-hand look at the technical and political challenges that the initiative was facing”.35 The visit also served to provide a clear signal that it would not be possible to inaugurate the factory during Lula’s final presidential visit to Africa, scheduled for November 2010, as initially desired by Brazilian authorities. The factory would not be ready for two reasons: (1) there would be no time to produce,

 Official Message 319 from SERE to Brazilian Ministry of Health, date: 7/5/2009.  Telegram 386 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 21/04/2009. 32  The legislation is available at http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2007–2010/2009/Lei/ L12117.htm 33  Telegraphic dispatch 277 from SERE to BRASEMB MAPUTO, date: 15/04/2010. 34  Telegram 479 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 3/05/2010. 35  Telegram 982 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 14/09/2010. 30 31

104

D. Marcondes

deliver and install the equipment donated by Brazil, and (2) most likely, the renovation work required to prepare the building would not be finished. Nonetheless, the embassy suggested the possibility that “the factory would be in conditions to host the beginning of the training process with the blistering machine donated from Brazil and therefore, it would allow for President Lula to testify to the advancements since his last visit to Maputo”.36 In addition to technical limitations, there were also specific challenges related to how the factory installation project was conducted by the Mozambican government, including the involvement of both the Mozambican Ministry of Health (MISAU) and that of the State Participation Management Institute (IGEPE  – Instituto de Gestão das Participações do Estado),37 associated with the Mozambican Ministry of Economy and Finance. As Brazilian diplomats in Maputo noted, IGEPE’s role is to control companies under the “tutelage of other ministries (energy, telecommunications, etc.) but, the MISAU had no experience with this tutelage system and therefore, some lack of definition remained regarding the allocation of responsibilities and there are clear flaws in communication between the two sides, in a scenario of delicate political sensitivity”.38 Brazilian diplomats also noted that IGEPE did not have the full amount required to cover the renovation costs that were under the responsibility of the Mozambican government.39 It would be up to a Brazil-based multinational mining company, Vale, to assist the government of Mozambique in making the renovation work possible.40 Towards the end of October 2010, Brazilian diplomats in Maputo informed Brasília that Vale’s director in Mozambique had received direct instructions from Vale’s president to identify how the company could “support the factory’s installation process, including financially”.41 During President Lula’s November 2010 visit to Mozambique, which included a visit to the factory, an MOU was signed between Vale and IGEPE, in which both parties agreed to co-finance the construction work.42 When reporting about the 2010 presidential visit, Brazilian diplomats in Maputo  Telegram 982 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 14/09/2010.  IGEPE is a state entity created in 2001, responsible for the managerial role of the Mozambican state, financially and institutionally autonomous from the Mozambican state but at the same time providing services to the state, including in terms of public-private investments. 38  Telegram 982 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 14/09/2010. 39  Telegram 982 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 14/09/2010. 40  Vale’s interests in coal reserves in Mozambique date back to the late 1980s, when the company was still fully owned by the Brazilian state and was named Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD). The company was privatized by the Brazilian government in 1997 and had been operating in Mozambique since 2004, when the company won the rights to explore the carboniferous basins situated in the Moatize District, located in the northern Mozambican province of Tete. CVRD started the construction of the coal mine in Moatize in 2007, the same year as the company was rebranded as Vale. Further information regarding Vale’s operations in Mozambique is available at http://www.vale.com/brasil/EN/aboutvale/news/Pages/conheca-nossas-operacoes-mocambique. aspx 41  Telegram 1031 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 28/09/2010. 42  Telegram 1229 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 17/11/2010. 36 37

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

105

noted that Vale’s commitment to co-finance the renovation works was a “key factor to solve the major obstacle that was stalling the continuation of the project”.43 Vale accepted to cover the costs because it considered the project as “convergent with its corporate social responsibility policy”.44 Parallel to the negotiations involving Vale, there were also other bureaucratic considerations that had to be dealt with to guarantee the continuity of the cooperation. In 2011, Brazilian diplomats in Maputo adopted a cautionary tone regarding the progress of the initiative: In spite of progress, there is an understanding that the factory installation project still faces considerable obstacles and uncertainties. In general, the beginning of the works, the delivery of the equipment and the visit by the team that is following the certification process constitute important steps.45

Some of these challenges were gradually solved. For example, in early 2011, Brazil and Mozambique signed a complementary agreement on the continuation of the cooperation associated with the factory. This was necessary because of the “legal gap” created when the bilateral Protocol of Intentions on Scientific and Technological Cooperation in the Health Sector expired in 2009.46 This constant need to renegotiate instruments providing legal backing for the continuation of Brazilian cooperation in the SMM reveals a broader problem: the lack of an overall legislation that guarantees the continuity of all Brazilian South-South cooperation initiatives, a challenge that had already emerged regarding the allocation of financial resources. Negotiations related to the renovation of the serum bags factory came to an end in early 2011. In February, Vale and the Mozambican government signed an agreement in which the company stated its commitment to finance the construction work and the renovations required.47 Vale, IGEPE and Pro-Air, the South African company chosen for the work, signed a contract in March 2011.48 The renovations started in the end of April 2011.49 Vale’s involvement illustrates the importance of the company in Mozambique. It is likely that both the Mozambican and the Brazilian governments assumed Vale would be interested in supporting such project due to the economic weight of the company in Mozambique. Vale’s commitment served to improve the company’s image, largely associated with forced removals and environmental degradation resulting from the exploration of the Moatize mine. Vale’s involvement could also be understood in light of the significant economic impact of HIV/AIDS in Mozambique since the largest group affected by the epidemic is the economically active population. Companies such as Vale are impacted by the spread of HIV/AIDS within their workforce. As the Brazilian technical  Telegram 1229 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 17/11/2010.  Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date 6/5/2011. 45  Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 6/5/2011. 46  Telegraphic dispatch 26 from SERE to BRASEMB MAPUTO, date: 21/01/2011. 47  Telegram 466 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 07/06/2011. 48  Telegram 174 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 25/02/2011. 49  Telegram 371 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 6/05/2011. 43 44

106

D. Marcondes

c­ ooperation in pharmaceutical production is inspired by a domestic analogy component, Vale’s engagement with the factory also invokes the image of a domestic analogy. In the 1980s, Vale was one of the first Brazilian companies to support healthcare for its employees who were affected by HIV/AIDS. As previously mentioned, President Lula had hoped to inaugurate the SMM in his November 2010 visit to Mozambique. However, it was only during a July 2012 visit to Mozambique by Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer that a ceremony marked “the completion of the work and the launch of the operational phase”.50 At the time, the factory was only able to pack drugs produced in Brazil.51 These challenges associated with the SMM encouraged a cautionary approach regarding the possibility of cooperation with other African countries in pharmaceutical production. During a bilateral meeting in 2013, Benin’s Minister of Health asked about the possibility of Brazil building an ARV factory in the West African country. In response, a Brazilian diplomat indicated that “the reality of the project in Mozambique makes Brazil hesitant to repeat the experience”.52 The launch of the operational phase did not solve all the financial challenges associated with the SMM project. While Mozambique’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs recognized to Brazilian diplomats that the SMM was “of strategic importance to Mozambique”,53 in the beginning of 2015, the Mozambican Minister of Health mentioned that the Mozambican government “did not have the resources to finance the factory operations and signalled the possibility of partnering with a private Mozambican institution”.54 While the challenges continued, an important step took place in July 2015, when “the SMM started the first pharmaceutical production in which all stages of the production process had been operated in African soil, producing one million pills in the first week of production” (Oliveira 2015). As of 2018, Brazil had been able to transfer to Mozambique the knowledge to produce 14 high-demand drugs, such as painkillers and medication to address hypertension.55 In April 2018, the SMM was granted a good practice in manufacturing certificate after an inspection by the MISAU and the WHO.56 At the end of 2018, the SMM was producing medication to address diabetes, hypertension and mental illnesses as well as paracetamol (Lusa 2018). The production of high-demand drugs, which were heavily imported by Mozambique, had been recommended by Mozambican officials.57

 Telegram 1164 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 16/10/2013.  Telegram 770 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 11 /10/2012. 52  Telegram 15 from BRASEMB COTONOU to SERE, date: 16/01/2013. 53  Telegram 66 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 18/01/2013. 54  Telegram 174 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 13/02/2015. 55  See Relatório de Gestão para o Senado Federal do Embaixador do Brasil em Moçambique, Rodrigo Baena Soares, 21/06/2018. 56  Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “República de Moçambique-Informação ostensiva Junho de 2018”. 57  Telegram 1024 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 02/11/2015. 50 51

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

107

The change in the production line is related to concerns regarding the financial sustainability of the project, particularly the need to become independent from direct Brazilian financial support. The SMM would no longer be destined to produce ARVs, some of which had become obsolete due to new treatment protocols.58 The commercial viability of the factory would be guaranteed via the production of high-demand drugs required by the Mozambican National Health Service. ARVs would continue to be purchased by the Mozambican government or donated by Northern donors. In 2019, Brazilian officials based in Brasília and in Maputo reconfirmed the Brazilian commitment to continue cooperating in the SMM project, with an emphasis on high-demand medication, including the possibility of producing medication to fight tuberculosis. Brazilian officials also commented that some of this medication could be exported to South Africa.59 It is also worth mentioning that the role of the SMM will remain important particularly in light of the 2019 announcement that IGEPE placed the Mozambican state company responsible for importing and distributing medication (Medimoc) for sale (Jornal de Notícias 2019). This initiative is part of a “restructuring of the state’s business sector, aimed at financially recovering state companies, which were mostly stagnated”.60

5  Conclusion The analysis presented here discussed the challenges associated with the Brazilian partnership for pharmaceutical production in Mozambique. From the beginning, the cooperation was marked by the need to balance the political support behind the initiative and the need to develop technical expertise and institutional capacity. The pre-existing circumstances associated with the Mozambican health sector, including how to respond to HIV/AIDS, required significant adaptations on the part of the Brazilian actors. At the same time, these circumstances, associated with the limitations of the Brazilian South-South cooperation structure, also informed the possibilities of ownership and appropriation that could be made by the Mozambican side. The partnership in building the factory also touches on a fundamental issue: the role of the state in the provision of health, illustrating the different ways in which this relationship has been constructed in Brazil and in Mozambique. In addition, the analysis of the Brazilian involvement in the SMM contributes to a discussion that goes beyond the bilateral cooperation, that is, the unpacking of the Brazilian response to HIV/AIDS as a model for other countries. While it is undeniable that Brazilian policies have produced positive results domestically  – i.e.

58  For example, nevirapine, an ARV produced in Brazil and packed at the SMM in 2014, was replaced by more modern medication within HIV/AIDS treatment protocols (Rossi 2017). 59  Interviews conducted with Brazilian diplomats in Brasília and Maputo, September 2019. 60  As of early 2020, IGEPE was not able to find a buyer for Medimoc.

108

D. Marcondes

p­ revention initiatives reduced the number of new cases and the provision of treatment reduced the number of deaths and the number of hospitalizations – the possibility of transferring this experience to Mozambique was complicated by the context-­specific character of the Brazilian response: “Brazil has been widely cited as a model of policy response for developing countries. But Brazil’s response is not easily replicable in Africa, because of important differences” (Reich and Bery 2005, 330). These differences are associated with the presence of specific factors in Brazil, such as the low prevalence of HIV/AIDS, a well-developed pharmaceutical industry, foreign support for the national HIV/AIDS programme and civil society mobilization. Malich and Marion draw attention to the context-specific nature of Brazil’s pharmaceutical policy, which made ARV provision possible: Brazil is one of a small group of middle-income countries (which also includes India, China, Indonesia and Cuba) that has achieved near-total pharmaceutical self-sufficiency as a result of unique socio-political histories, strict replication of Brazil’s transformation is therefore unlikely to lead other countries to similar success (2015, 1).

Another challenge associated with the transferability of the Brazilian experience is related to the gap between pharmaceutical production between Brazil and Mozambique: While Brazil has a high number of infections, less than 1% of its population is HIV positive, and this number is dwarfed by the HIV prevalence in Africa. Therefore, governments of countries like Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique with a level of adult HIV prevalence of 20% and over, would need considerably more facilities to provide ARVs to their populations. Additionally, compared with many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil is an economic giant with a long-standing and well-established manufacturing base. This highlights the crucifix of the matter. Not only would more investment be needed. But these countries are also poorer than Brazil and have a less developed manufacturing base. They are therefore to a larger extent excluded from following the Brazilian model and using the provisions allowed within the TRIPS agreement to the maximum benefit of their populace. The Brazilian model highlights as much what can be achieved as it underlines the impossibility of its transference to many African countries (Hanefeld 2002, 88).

The difficulty in transferring the Brazilian approach to HIV/AIDS to other contexts is connected to the specificities of the partnership between state actors and civil society organizations which existed in Brazil: “What cannot be copied: The involvement of civil society organizations as actors in the process and not as recipients of government decisions”.61 Others have mentioned that although Brazilian international cooperation in HIV/AIDS is important, “it did not carry with it the principles of the Brazilian Health System”.62 Criticism also relates to the very idea of a “Brazilian model.” In an interview in 2007, Dr. Robert Gallo, one of the scientists involved in the discovery of H ­ IV/

 Author’s interview over Skype with Brazilian medical doctor with professional experience in the Brazilian National HIV/AIDS programme, 11 January 2016. 62  Author’s interview with representative of health-based NGO, Rio de Janeiro, January 2015. 61

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

109

AIDS, denied that the Brazilian response to HIV/AIDS was actually a model. For Gallo, the problem was that: when you say that you are a model, it is implied that the whole world should follow you. But the majority of countries already does that [provide free treatment for patients with AIDS] Only countries that are very, very poor don’t do that (...). Maybe you are a model to South Africa, to some countries, but not the whole world, since the majority of countries already treats its patients (Maia 2007b).

Others have rejected the idea of best practices in responding to HIV/AIDS, calling instead for approaches that pay attention to specific considerations and identify elements that can be used to develop a new, context-specific strategy: (…) the problem with best practice is that there are no recipes that can be replicated, conditions are always different. One can analyse the conditions that allowed for a successful experience and through a comparative analysis find common elements that allow for a new plan of action to be taken.63

This point of view has found echo in other contributions that question the use of the Brazilian approach as a model by emphasizing the specificity of some of the strategies employed by Brazilian actors, such as compulsory licensing: (…) countries like Brazil (with substantial resources, a domestic industry, political mobilization, and a large market) can use threats of compulsory licensing as leverage in price negotiations to achieve greater discounts. However, only a few developing countries resemble Brazil in these respects (Reich and Bery 2005, 337). In the emblematic case of Brazil’s HIV/AIDS programme, we may well ask whether Brazil’s use of a compulsory licence provides a wider and replicable policy model for ensuring access to medicines (...) In the case of Brazil, the issuing of a compulsory licence followed on the heels of more than a decade of negotiation with patent holders, and was supported by multiple ministers, sophisticated representation in international arenas (in particular at the WTO) and broad, sustained public support among local and international public health groups. Because the potential domestic and international political cost of issuing compulsory licence is high, the tool requires significant political coordination and economic resources in order to be viable (Sweet 2013, 43).

The difficulty in expanding the Brazilian model is reflected not only in differences related to financial resources or the country’s level of development but also in the specificities of Brazilian cultural factors that have formed the Brazilian response. Understandings related to sexuality shaped the creation of a more inclusive approach in the Brazilian strategy, including non-discriminatory assistance to LGBT individuals, as well as sex workers. A recognition of the importance of these cultural factors helps in understanding the differences in the Brazilian response to, for example, the South African response to HIV/AIDS, in which specific approaches to race and sexuality have also shaped the government response (Santos 2008). While it is problematic to talk about the applicability of the Brazilian experience as a model for other contexts, Mello e Souza points out to the “international significance” of the Brazilian strategy (2007, 55). For the author, and as previously indicated, the Brazil 63

 Author’s interview with academic and HIV/AIDS activist, Rio de Janeiro, January 2015.

110

D. Marcondes

response has shown the importance of combining government and civil society engagement, revealing that: decisions on whether to provide antiretroviral therapies in resource-poor settings depend primarily on political rather than technical considerations. Brazil has helped create more favourable conditions for other resolute developing countries to follow its lead in implementing AIDS treatment policies (Mello e Souza 2007, 56).

Treating the Brazilian response to HIV/AIDS as a model that could be easily adaptable in Southern contexts is problematic because of the context-specific nature of the Brazilian experience, with specific elements that were not present, for example, in Mozambique. Nonetheless, acknowledging the specificities of the Brazilian response does not eliminate the recognition of the positive national and international implications that the Brazilian response has as an inspiration for government officials and civil society organizations of the Global South to organize their own responses, based on their specific political, social and economic circumstances. The development of pharmaceutical production in Mozambique, which was possible due to the initial cooperation for ARV production, should be recognized as a relevant contribution in itself and as a learning opportunity for both Mozambican and Brazilian actors on how to manage partnerships. Acknowledgements  The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the institutions to which he is affiliated to. All translations have been made by the author, unless otherwise indicated. The author would like to thank the support provided by CAPES/PRÓ-DEFESA (edital n. 27/2018), CNPq grant 439044/2018-9 and FAPERJ grant E-26/202.732/2019.

References Amorim, Celso. 2007. Discurso do Ministro das Relações Exteriores, Celso Amorim na 60a Assembleia Mundial da Saúde. Brasília: Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Calcagnotto, Gilberto. 2003. Access to health services and pharmaceuticals in Brazil. Comments in the contribution by Mônica Viegas Andrade. In Globalisation, global health governance and national health politics in developing countries: An exploration into the dynamics of interfaces, ed. Wolfgang Hein and Lars Kohlmorgen, 261–268. Hamburg: DUI. Galvão, Jane. 2002. A política brasileira de distribuição de medicamentos anti-retrovirais: privilégio ou um direito? Caderno de Saúde Pública 18 (1): 213–219. Hanefeld, Johanna. 2002. Patent rights vs patient rights: Intellectual property, pharmaceutical companies and access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. Feminist Review 72 (1): 84–92. Jornal de Notícias. 2019. IGEPE anuncia venda da Medimoc. Jornal de Notícias, August 6. https:// www.jornalnoticias.co.mz/index.php/economia/92262-igepe-anuncia-venda-da-medimoc. Accessed 29 May 2020. Lusa. 2018. Apoio do Brasil permite duplicar produção de medicamentos em Moçambique em 2019. LUSA, October 25. https://www.dn.pt/lusa/apoio-do-brasil-permite-duplicar-producaode-medicamentos-em-mocambique-em-2019-10086414.html. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Brazilian Health Cooperation in Africa: A Case Study of Promoting Pharmaceutical…

111

Luz, Francisco C. S. 2006. A questão da AIDS na África Austral: realidade e perspectivas da cooperação brasileira com os países da região para o combate à pandemia. L Curso de Altos Estudos (CAE), Brasília: Instituto Rio Branco. Maia, Felipe. 2007a. Famosos influenciaram no sucesso do programa contra AIDS, diz médica de Harvard. Folha de São Paulo, November 15. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ ciencia/2007/11/345697-famosos-influenciaram-no-sucesso-do-programa-contra-aids-dizmedica-de-harvard.shtml. Accessed 29 May 2020. ———. 2007b. Descobridor da AIDS nega que o Brasil seja referência contra a doença. Folha de São Paulo, November 30. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ciencia/2007/11/349878-descobridor-da-aids-nega-que-brasil-seja-referencia-contra-a-doenca.shtml. Accessed 29 May 2020. Malich, Erika, and Sarah Marion. 2015. Increasing access to medicines. Leveraging Brazil’s experience. CIGI Policy Brief 2. Massingarrela, Flavio H.S. 2009. Cooperação Sul-Sul: caso de Moçambique e Brasil. Oportunidades e constrangimentos. Graduation thesis. Maputo: Instituto Superior de Relações Internacionais (ISRI). Matsinhe, Cristiano. 2006. Tábula rasa: dinâmica da resposta moçambicana ao HIV/SIDA. Maputo: Texto Editores. Oliveira, Viviane. 2015. Foi dada a largada. Revista de Manguinhos. https://agencia.fiocruz.br/ sites/agencia.fiocruz.br/files/revistaManguinhosMateriaPdf/FoiDadaaLargada.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2020. Reich, Michael R., and Priya Bery. 2005. Expanding global access to ARVs: The challenges of prices and patents. In The AIDS pandemic: Impact on science and society, ed. Kenneth H. Mayer and H.F. Pizer, 324–350. New York: Academic Press. Rodrigues, Rawlinson D. 2014. Cooperação internacional da FIOCRUZ: O caso do projeto de instalação da fábrica de medicamentos em Moçambique. MA thesis, Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública. Rossi, Amanda. 2017. Em vez de remédio contra Aids, fábrica financiada pelo Brasil em Moçambique produzirá analgésico. BBC Brasil, December 6. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-42176248. Accessed 29 May 2020. Mello e Souza, André de. 2007. Defying globalization: Effective self-reliance in Brazil. In The global politics of AIDS, ed. Paul G.  Harris and Patricia D.  Siplon, 37–63. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Santos, Gustavo Gomes da Costa. 2008. AIDS, política e sexualidade: refletindo sobre as respostas governamentais à AIDS na África do Sul e no Brasil. Physis Revista de Saúde Coletiva 19(2): 283–300. Sweet, Cassandra M. 2013. The political economy of pharmaceutical production in Brazil. In The new political economy of pharmaceuticals. Production, innovation and TRIPS in the Global South, ed. Hans Lofgren and Owain David Williams, 29–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Terto, Veriano, Jr. 1999. Seropositivity, homosexuality and identity politics in Brazil. Culture, Health & Sexuality 1 (4): 329–346.

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations from the Prism of Civil Society Laura Trajber Waisbich

1  Introduction Maputo, August 2013. Over 60 social-environmental movements, peasants’ associations and civil society organisations (CSOs) from Mozambique, Brazil and Japan gather in the 1st Peoples’ Triangular Conference to discuss the joint initiative ProSAVANA.  Groups gathered to challenge and resist what was seen as a ‘top-­ down’ trilateral (Japan-Brazil-Mozambique) agricultural development project in Northern Mozambique1. Johannesburg, April 2018. A street rally reassembling around 100 people occupies the financial district of Sandton protesting against the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping and their New Development Bank (NDB). A year later, in Cape Town, a similar crowd takes the streets again raising environmental, transparency, labour and anti-corruption concerns related to NDB operations2. Street protests are a new repertoire to ongoing BRICS-related civil society mobilisation3. From the activism on BRICS and the NDB to the emblematic ‘No to ProSAVANA campaign’, what do these emerging forms of citizen activism reveal about the state of Brazil-Africa relations in the early  See Aguiar and Pacheco (2016), for a complete account of this event and of other activities led by civil society groups around the ProSAVANA programme. 2  Examples of the coverage of the 2018 demonstration in the South Africa media can be seen at https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1987116/break-the-brics-protesters-march-outside-thesummit/. For the 2019 demonstration, see https://dialogochino.net/25543-ndb-slow-to-deliver-onpromises/. 3  For accounts on BRICS-related civil society mobilisation, see Bond and Garcia (2015), Pomeroy et al. (2016), Poskitt et al. (2016) and Waisbich (2016). 1

L. Trajber Waisbich (*) Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil South-South Research and Policy Centre (ASUL), São Paulo, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_8

113

114

L. Trajber Waisbich

twenty-first century? What were the main forms through which civil society sought to participate, influence and/or resist to official Brazil-Africa exchanges in the early 2000s, and how are these forms evolving in the current scenario? This chapter looks at Brazil-Africa relations through the lenses of Brazilian South-South cooperation (SSC) and analyses Brazilian civil society engagement in both agendas. Brazil’s SSC ‘re-emerged’ in the early 2000s (Leite et  al. 2014; Mawdsley 2019), and relations with Africa became a privileged site for advancing new types of political, economic, technical partnerships. The chapter offers a descriptive-analytical account of who in the Brazilian civil society sought to participate in, influence or resist governmental SSC initiatives in the African continent and what were the main mobilising issues and coexisting modes of engagement shaping state-society relations in the Brazil-Africa agenda. In order to do so, it combines two analytical lenses: first, foreign policy analysis (FPA), drawing on literature on the ‘democratisation’ of Brazilian foreign policy (BFP) and, within that, SSC policies and practices. Second, it relies on participation and transnational social movements to unpack social mobilisation around Brazilian SSC and Brazil-Africa agendas in the twenty-first century. Based on actor and contentious politics tracing, I first posit the centrality of collective action on Brazil-Africa relations to the more recent civil society activism around BFP, in which monitoring official Brazilian footprints in Africa offered Brazilian civil society critical entry points to contribute and/or challenge official narratives and practices and reinforced democratisation claims for BFP to be open to social participation. Second, social engagement in the Brazil-Africa agenda was both diverse (in terms of profiles and motivations) but also unevenly distributed across sectors and issues. Agricultural development and infrastructure building, in particular, achieved greater political salience and visibility and galvanised more intense forms of mobilisation among Brazilian civil society. Third, I argue that this social engagement responded to the increasing national and transnational political, symbolic and material opportunities for Brazilian civil society actors to engage ‘Brazil’s global footprints’ at home and abroad, enabling different groups to pursue collaborative and confrontational forms of engagement with Brazil’s official SSC/ Africa policies. This diverse panorama was intimately related to the ways in which Brazil’s international extroversion played out under the Workers’ Party (PT  – Partido dos Trabalhadores) government (2003–2016): its international agendas, priorities and modi operandi but also to the sociopolitical connections and affinities numerous social groups had with the party and the government. As a consequence, state-society relations forged under PT’s rule allowed for coexisting, but also blurred forms, of autonomous and co-constructed interfaces and ‘spaces for participation’ (Gaventa 2006). Following this introduction, the first section presents a conceptual framework to discuss civil society engagement in Brazil-Africa relations. Then, I move to the empirical-analytical on the multiple forms of engagement by Brazilian civil society actors during the PT era. In the concluding section, I suggest ways to look at shifting forms of engagement in the more recent ‘SSC ebb’ scenario (Cesarino 2019) and, in particular since 2019, under the extreme-right government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

115

2  C  ivil Society Engagement in Brazil-Africa Relations in the Twenty-First Century Looking at Brazil-Africa relations from the prism of civil society offers alternative insights into this cross-regional partnership and contributes to ongoing efforts to investigate state-society relations in the context of BFP. Brazil-Africa relations have become a privileged site to examine the politics of BFP in the 2000s, as the contours of the partnership have slowly but steadily entered domestic policy debates, with greater salience in the media, legislative and electoral debates and also in the agenda of interest and pressure groups, including those in civil society. Considering the plurality and diversity of civil society actors in both sides of the Atlantic, this chapter focuses on civil society actors engaged in policy work, in opposition to the multitude of social actors who also inhabit Brazil-Africa relations by virtue of their non(openly or explicitly defined)-policy work, including those engaged in cultural, religious and educational exchanges, migrants and students. Then, it limits the analysis to Brazilian civil society actors and to the interaction among them and civil society groups in Africa or elsewhere acting on Brazil-Africa relations. Having circumscribed the object, the following paragraphs describe my conceptual approaches to the topic. First, while looking at civil society engagement with the agenda, I mobilise Gaventa’s (2006) notion of spaces of participation: ‘closed spaces’, ‘invited spaces’ and ‘claimed/created spaces’. I pay close attention to the middle category of spaces and to what Pires and Vaz (2014) call state-society interfaces being constructed around BFP and the Brazil-Africa agenda, where the state retains the authority to regulate who participates and how while having to negotiate with citizens the institutional architectures and aims of interactions. While investigating the genesis and nature of those spaces and interfaces, this chapter also draws on FPA studies on the ‘democratisation of BFP’, characterised by a continuing, albeit incomplete, process of opening up since the 1990s (Lima 2000; Lopes 2010; Milani and Pinheiro 2013). Within this body of work, scholars have emphasised the ways in which BFP became subjected to bureaucratic disputes (Lima 2000; Milani and Pinheiro 2013) and social problematisation (Sanchez et al. 2006). Drawing on this literature on the ‘politics of BFP’ (see also Hill 2003), this chapter explores how civil society actors have problematised and disputed this policy domain and, within that SSC and Brazil-Africa relations, both through specific geographical struggles and broader claims to the right to participate in Brazilian foreign policymaking. Finally, narrowing down to participation and mobilisation around Brazilian SSC, recent studies suggest that shifting global and national dynamics in the 2000s have created more enabling environments for Brazilian civil society engagement. Among the domestic factors, Pomeroy and Waisbich (2019) suggest the priority given to SSC during the PT era and the degree of decentralisation of the Brazilian SSC agenda that resulted in growing opportunities for the participation of social groups either autonomously or through interfaces with different sectorial governmental

116

L. Trajber Waisbich

bodies. Concurrently, at the global level, new international opportunity structures (symbolic, political and financial) appeared for social actors to monitor and engage with ‘Brazilian global footprints’ (Milhorance 2013; Dolcetti-Marcolini 2014; Berrón and Brant 2015; Pomeroy et al. 2016; Poskitt et al. 2016; Milhorance and Bursztyn 2017; Waisbich et al. forthcoming). These opportunities were created not only by the rise in cross-border flows but also by the ‘internationalisation of domestic disputes’ (Milhorance and Bursztyn 2017). Studies have also identified the simultaneity of both confrontation and collaboration modes of engagement, advanced by different networks but also involving actors that oscillated between both (Berrón and Brant 2015; Milhorance and Bursztyn 2017). This dual role manifested both through fighting or resisting state official initiatives or state-backed private investments as well as being involved in the consolidation of particular platforms of policy dialogue and the promotion of experience sharing in connection with intergovernmental stances. Having these combined set of analytical tools in mind, the next section proceeds to empirically map Brazilian civil society engagement in Brazil-Africa SSC exchanges in the early twenty-first century.

3  U  npacking Brazilian Civil Society Engagement: Actors, Issues and Modes of Engagement It would be historically inaccurate to take the more recent forms of citizen engagement in Brazil-Africa relations as the first manifestation of this phenomenon. Instead, a longer trajectory of activism-based exchanges preceded the mobilisation that flourished in the 2000s. People-to-people connections forged in the context of African independence struggles and the civil-military authoritarian rule in Brazil are important interpretative keys to read the recent updated interlinkages and their associated narratives, particularly the predominance of social groups commonly associated with so-called progressive or leftist repertoires and their narratives: from the ‘mutual solidarity’ in the past (Corrêa and Homem 1977) to the present ‘common struggles’. Bearing this historical background in mind, one has also to recognise the particular forms of activism that emerged in the 2000s out of an unprecedented increase in the quantum of South-South exchanges (including technical cooperation, political dialogue, trade and investments) between Brazil and African countries under PT’s rule. It is equally important to understand the current forms of citizen engagement in relation to a profound, albeit fragile, shift in Brazilian international identity and status: from a purely developing country to an emerging country with authority and capacity to act internationally and influence global dynamics (Leite et al. 2014; Milhorance and Soule-Kohndou 2017; Stone et al. 2019).

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

117

3.1  E  ngaging Brazil-Africa Relations at Home and Abroad: The Who and the How Looking at who in Brazilian civil society participates and how, one finds a multifaceted landscape, both in terms of diversity of actors and modes of engagement. By empirically mapping these actors, this section characterises different and coexisting types of engagement with the agenda and shows the blurred borders between categories of social actors and the ways they have  – in the course of the global ‘re-­ emergence’ of the SSC agenda in the 2000s – interacted with the Brazilian state and governmental institutions as well as with PT’s own ideas about Brazilian international identity as a ‘Southern emerging democracy’. Who in Brazilian civil society mobilised and participated in the Brazil-Africa agenda? As set in the previous section, Brazilian greater global diplomatic assertiveness and increased political and economic ties with a range of countries in the developing world opened new venues and opportunities to a range of national social actors to act. Among those who seized them to craft new interfaces, one finds national development and rights-based NGOs, social movements (notably land-­ related ones), labour unions, think tanks and academics. Motivations behind the collective action by this range of actors include the desire to provide expertise to public initiatives being conducted beyond borders, a research interest on Brazilian foreign engagements and/or development cooperation, a concern with the (negative) impacts of ‘Global Brazil’, a political interest on international development cooperation, a political internationalist interest or a desire to include social participation as a principle of foreign policy (Berrón and Brant 2015; Milhorance and Soule-­ Kohndou 2017). National NGOs, in particular, came to this emerging SSC agenda with their decades-long involvement with development cooperation, not only having benefitted from ‘traditional aid’ support for their activities in Brazil but also from having participated in several global development-related conferences: from the UN social agenda in the 1990s, the OECD Aid Effectiveness debates in the early 2000s, and forums related to regional integration and BRICS affairs. Far from trying to specify how many Brazilian civil society actors have interacted with the Brazil-Africa SSC agenda in the 2000s, it is plausible, however, to assume their presence was larger in Portuguese-speaking countries and particularly in Mozambique, Brazil’s main bilateral technical cooperation partner across the whole period4. Santos and Kreychete (2016) found that between 2001 and 2015, only in Mozambique, at least 16 Brazilian CSOs and/or social movements took part in cooperation-related activities5. Their list does not fully coincide with the Brazilian 4  See, for instance, the latest IPEA/ABC Cobradi report (IPEA and ABC 2018), with data from 2014 to 2016, where Mozambique was the main bilateral partner of Brazil, receiving 17% of the total bilateral flows (approximately R$62 million during the period). Mozambique also ranked first in the previous reports. 5  In their study, they have named the following actors: Associação de Apoio ao Programa Alfabetização Solidária, Ação Educativa, Avante, Campanha Nacional pelo Direito a Educação, IBASE, INESC, FASE, IDESAM, ISER, Missão Criança, Movimento Camponês Popular, Movimento de Mulheres Camponesa, Movimento de Pequenos Agricultores, Pastoral da Criança, Vida Brasil.

118

L. Trajber Waisbich

Cooperation Agency’s (ABC – Agência Brasileira de Cooperação) (2019) own list of ‘official partnerships with national institutions for the provision of SSC’ (between 2000 and 2014, across Latin America and Africa)6. Such incomplete overlap corroborates the idea of a multiplicity of entry doors for civil society to engage with SSC, including autonomously and through partnerships with other Brazilian state institutions, beyond ABC, and other development actors (traditional donors, international organisations). Professional NGOs and think thanks based in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia were the most salient profiles among those politically engaged (Pomeroy and Waisbich 2019), followed by grassroots groups, including agrarian social movements based outside the larger south-eastern urban centres or in the capital city. However, actions by the latter were often restricted to particular key sectors (e.g. agriculture initiatives), whereas the former group has been more politically active across sectors. Both have forged connections with multiple transnational networks (including Via Campesina for the transnational agrarian movements and the Network of Southern Think-Tanks – NeST – for some think tanks and NGOs) and have mobilised across scales, bridging the national and global levels. These transnational linkages connected Brazilian civil society mobilisation on the SSC/Africa agendas to larger political economy dynamics of transnational activism on ‘rising powers in international development’. Transnational connections shaped what political, symbolical and material resources were available for different national groups to act7, for instance, with greater impetus to work on the ‘BRICS agenda’ or watchdogging Brazilian state and private capital on land/mining issues in countries like Mozambique. As for how this engagement took place (through what forms and modalities), here, I build on a ‘matrix of modes of civil society engagement in SSC’, suggested by Waisbich et  al. (forthcoming). The matrix characterises groups according to, first, the scale and consequently arenas where they participate and/or mobilise: national or transnational/global arenas and, second, the SSC policy dimension where this participation/mobilisation takes place: either a development cooperation policy engagement (or participation in policy dialogue) or an engagement in a particular – or a set of specific  – SSC projects/programmes. Finally, in the third (and cross-­

6  Out of the 334 institutions listed (mostly public agencies), 30 where characterised as ‘CSOs’ by the author. The category of civil society organisations encompasses NGOs, foundations, associations and faith-based organisations, namely, ALFASOL, Associação Alfabetização Solidária, ASBRAER, BRASSCOM, ABRASCAM, ABRAGEM, AAPAS, ANPROTEC, ANR, CRA, CLACSO, CONSEA, Fundação Gol de Letra, Fundação Roberto Marinho, Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Popular, IBASE, Instituto ELOS, Instituto Globoaves, Instituto Lummen, Missão Criança, OAB, OLODUM, ONG Pracatum, Organização Das Cooperativas Brasileiras, Pastoral da Criança do Brasil, Projeto Vida Viva Brasil, Raízes do Brasil Centro Cultural de Capoeira, Renabio, RENOVE and Viva Rio. 7  On the framing effect in transnational mobilisation from social actors in the Global South, see Waisbich (2014).

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

119

cutting) axis, civil society actors are assessed according to the type/nature of interaction with state institutions: in a continuum going from collaborative to non-­ collaborative interactions. As a heuristic device, the matrix must be taken as flexible, plastic and always-­ evolving depiction of the landscape, featuring overlapping memberships and modes of engagement. As mentioned, not only has multiscale activism been a frequent feature of Brazilian civil society mobilisation in this agenda, but also groups have participated in domestic policy debates on the role of Brazil in international development, in global development policy debates at the UN or in other development-­ related spaces (Dolcetti-Marcolini 2014; Berrón and Brant 2015; Pomeroy et  al. 2016) and simultaneously debated and mobilised over specific projects and programmes, such as those under the broader umbrella of Brazil-Africa agricultural exchanges (Pierri 2013; Cabral et  al. 2013; Milhorance 2013; Cabral and Leite 2015; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016). Considering the three different axes introduced above, I suggest here a tentative typology of modes of civil society engagement with SSC and, hence, Brazil-Africa relations, as depicted in Fig. 1. Among those mobilising nationally in Brazil, a first category is the one of national knowledge brokers: civil society actors generating autonomous information and evidence on what SSC with Africa was. Those actors, often academics and think tanks, but also some NGOs using knowledge as an advocacy tool, contributed with their expertise to reveal the state of the debate of Brazilian engagements with Africa, including which public and private actors were involved and how and what was happening on the ground. Examples of this kind of engagement include developing research and studies on Brazilian SSC in Africa8, conducting external evaluation and assessments of official Brazilian SSC and trilateral cooperation initiatives9 and creating autonomous knowledge platforms10. Knowledge brokers often framed their mobilisation as transparency-driven activism, emphasising their right  – as Brazilian citizens – to access information on what the Brazilian state does beyond borders and their legitimacy to engage and even contest those policy options and outcomes. Another category of actors is the one of national policy/institutional builders: civil society actors strengthening the national institutional frameworks for BFP and SSC. They acted, for instance, through informal coalitions, where they advocated for a new international development cooperation law for the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or for the strengthening of ABC’s structure and sectorial policies.

 For instance, by national organisations like IBASE, Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas; INESC, Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos; PACS, Políticas Alternativas para o Cone Sul; and Articulação SUL, Centro de Estudos e Articulação da Cooperação Sul-Sul. But also by the local chapters of INGOs, like Action Aid Brasil and Oxfam Brasil 9  See, for instance, PLAN and ASUL (2016) and WFP (2017). 10  Such as the Articulação SUL-Oxfam SSC project using open public budgetary systems to measure Brazilian federal expenditures with SSC (Articulação SUL and Oxfam Brasil 2018). 8

120

L. Trajber Waisbich

Fig. 1  Modes of civil society engagement in SSC and Brazil-Africa relations. (Source: Author’s own elaboration based on Waisbich et al. (forthcoming))

They also hosted a number of multi-stakeholder and practitioners’ policy ­dialogues11. For this group, activism was participation-driven, strongly framed under the right to participate in foreign policymaking. Combining those two fronts, civil society groups end up playing an important role of enabling policy dialogue through both autonomous spaces and dialogue interfaces with the government and state agencies, creating knowledge on Brazilian SSC and mobilising other civil society actors (including the media and citizens in general, particularly students). As such, they have generated not only critical knowledge on Brazil-Africa relations but also constituency for the South-South agenda in Brazil. As for the transnational policy mobilisation, a first category is the one of Brazilian civil society voices in global debates. There, national civil society actors sought to influence global debates – either directly or through Brazilian diplomatic channels – at the highest level. Examples range from Brazilian CSOs’ participation in the OECD High Level Forum in Busan, in 2011 (Suyama and Lopes 2012) and in the recent 2nd UN High-Level Conference on SSC  – BAPA+40, held in 2019. This  Examples include the National Conference on the New Brazilian Foreign Policy (convened by the Reflection Group on International Relations – GRRI – in 2013), the Dialogues on Brazilian South-South Cooperation (co-hosted by ASUL, INCIDE and FES from 2014 to 2016) and the Dialogues on Development Cooperation (hosted by the BRICS Policy Centre in 2017 and 2018). 11

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

121

global engagement also included participating in more or less coordinated global civil society networks on development cooperation, such as Better Aid, Southern Alliance or NeST. Another variation of this international activism is civil society mobilisation as stakeholders of Brazilian cross-regional initiatives, in arenas like the BRICS and their bank, the NDB. A second manifestation is found at the project/programme level, where mobilisation took place both directly in partner countries in Africa or in Brazil, during the project/programme design, implementation and/or evaluation phases. In this cluster, it is possible to note groups working as implementers of Brazilian official SSC initiatives. Examples range from the NGO AlfaSol in the 1990s (in the education sector working with Mozambique, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe – STP) and in the early 2000s the NGO Missão Criança implementing the Bolsa-Escola in São Tomé and Príncipe, the Pastoral da Criança and the National Bishops’ Conference (CNBB – Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil) in Guinea Bissau working on children information systems. In Mozambique and South Africa, agrarian social movements and peasants’ associations, such as the Agricultural Smallholders Movement (MPA  – Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores) and the National Confederacy of Agrarian Workers (CONTAG  – Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura), were also implementers of agriculture-related initiatives related to seed banks (Suyama and Pomeroy 2015)12. Besides officially partnering with the Brazilian state, civil society actors have also been implementers of autonomous cooperation activities/SSC from below. This mode is an autonomous, self-claimed mode, also seen as a ‘resistance mode’ (Pomeroy and Silva 2017). Among Brazilian actors involved with this type of engagement, one finds the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) cross-regional political mobilisation together with Via Campesina and also other initiatives by Brazilian CSOs, including the African Initiative of the Lula Institute, Conectas Human Rights Portuguese-­ Speaking Africa Exchange Programme (2008–2011), the National Right to Education Campaign’s South-South Cooperation Programme on Right to Education between Portuguese-Speaking Countries (2011–2016) and the CONTAG Platform of CPLP Peasants (since 2012). As for the collaborative and non-collaborative nature of Brazilian civil society engagements, one can identify a constructive engagement by sector and by theme/ issue, taking place mostly in Brazil, for instance, in the agenda of food and nutritional security, using invited spaces such as the Food and Nutritional Security National Council (Consea  – Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional)13. In that particular issue, civil society present in Consea has taken part

 Other punctual examples of civil society participation in implementing official Brazilian SSC initiatives can be found in ABC (2010). 13  Until 2018, Consea was one of the most important institutionalised spaces for civil society participation and mobilisation on Brazil-Africa SSC issues (Cabral and Leite 2015; Shankland and Gonçalves 2016; Pomeroy & Waisbich 2019). The council was formally abolished by President Jair Bolsonaro in January 2019, as one of its first measures, under the justification of reducing the influence of civil society organisation he considered ‘overly leftist voices’. 12

122

L. Trajber Waisbich

in field missions to monitor and assess official Brazilian SSC initiatives in Africa, like the PAA Africa programme of home-grown school feeding (PAA Africa 2015). Consea has also invited Mozambican civil society representatives to expose their concerns about ProSAVANA to the inter-ministerial council on food and nutritional security and has started a dialogue with ABC to develop a strategy to guide Brazilian SSC in the sector14. Through this constructive engagement, civil society actors acted as insiders to the policy process, attempting to translate the criticism but also the learnings, including from the ProSAVANA crisis, into the policy process. Finally, it is equally possible to identify non-collaborative/resistance engagement by sector and theme/issue, taking place mostly outside Brazil. Here, the most significant example is the cross-regional ‘No to ProSAVANA’ campaign that attempted to transform and ultimately halt the trilateral cooperation programme in Mozambique. ProSAVANA was launched in 2009. Its original ‘Master Plan’, whose zero draft was leaked in 2013, was based on significant private sector investment in commercial agriculture (mostly exports-led) and agro-processing15. Support for small-scale farmers was only added to the overall programme after civil society started campaigning for more transparency and participation from the small-scale farming sector (Shankland and Gonçalves 2016; Aguiar and Pacheco 2016; Chichava and Alden 2017). Citizen contestation of ProSAVANA inside Mozambique is not the only factor behind changes and a de facto halt of ProSAVANA, but is definitely in important factor to it, alongside the loss of appetite by Brazilian investors. The campaign is a very unique mobilisation, the only one of its kind, for the number of actors it has mobilised, the political and public visibility it has gained and having (at least partially) succeeded in engaging three governments and shaping the workings of a trilateral governmental project involving Brazil. The campaign has also fed into, and contributed, to a greater public debate inside Brazil around accountability of BFP (Cabral and Leite 2015), becoming a symbolic negative example of the contradictions embedded to the Brazilian role as an ‘emerging power’. An interesting example of social mobilisation along the collaboration/non-­ collaboration continuum is found in the BRICS agenda. Here, Brazilian groups have both joined forces with their peers in other BRICS countries and engaged, since 2013, in a series of transnational activities to influence BRICS’s high-level agendas and NDB’s policies and, at the same time, acted to oppose and challenge the BRICS and its bank, through autonomous spaces like counter summits (BRICS from Below and People’s BRICS) and street protests. While Brazilian groups have played both insider-outsider roles, they have often leaned towards ‘critical collaboration’ (Waisbich 2016).

 The strategy started to be drafted in 2017/2018 but was never finalised. Interview with former ABC officer, in charge of coordinating the informal working group on the ABC Food and Nutritional SSC Strategy, October 2018. 15  See https://www.prosavana.gov.mz/pt-pt/. 14

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

123

For the most radical voices, more confrontational ways of working were grounded on a reading of BRICS’s sub-imperial nature and on its role in the ‘new scramble for Africa’ (Bond and Garcia 2015; Peoples’ BRICS 2017). While at the same time, Brazilian development and rights-based NGOs, for instance, have monitored and tried to influence official summits (through official track 2 and track 3 diplomacy channels, like the BRICS Academic Forum and the Civil BRICS). Some entities have also engaged in critical dialogue with NDB’s management to advocate for more socio-environmentally sustainable policies and practices, working within the cross-­ regional networks such as the ‘BRICS Working Group’ within the Coalition for Human Rights in Development (Coalition 2017). This activism has responded to the desire to hold the Brazilian state accountable to its ‘global reformist’ discourses and promises, by shaping NDB’s policy frameworks. Their mobilisation has strongly relied on previous experiences with engaging international financial institutions (most notably the World Bank) and also the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES  – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social). Since the early 2000s, Brazilian CSOs had gathered in a series of coalitions to discuss socio-­ environmental and transparency standards for BNDES’s operations based on their own assessment of the banks’ wrongdoings in Brazil and abroad (Cardoso et  al. 2015; Sierra and Hochstetler 2017; Conectas Direitos Humanos 2018). In sum, this mapping reveals a multitude of roles (monitoring and evaluating, watchdogging, contesting, implementing Brazil’s SSC initiatives with Africa and also autonomously engaging, from below, with African counterparts). While this chapter does not systematically discuss the outcomes of each instance of collective action or the effectiveness of citizen participation in the SSC or Brazil-Africa agendas16, it is possible, nonetheless, to suggest determinants to the variation in participation across sectors and scales. Those include (i) the existence of transnational networks interested in the topic and Brazilian group connections to those; (ii) the degree and nature of participation dynamics in each policy sector and whether or not participation was embedded in the original policy being shared/transferred through SSC17; (iii) whether or not the SSC implementing institution had a tradition of, or openness to, social participation; and, related to that, (iv) whether individuals heading programmes or institutions were sensitive, open or politically inclined to social participation18.

 For an assessment of influence in the case of ProSAVANA, see Cabral and Leite (2015) and Shankland and Gonçalves (2016). See also Milhorance and Soule-Kohndou (2017) for a broader analysis concerning agriculture-related mobilisation. 17  As in the case of PAA Africa or home-grown school feeding initiatives, where the original National Food and Nutritional Security Plan, System and Law included social participation as a key feature of the policy. 18  As it was the case of agencies such as the former Ministry of Agricultural Development and the General Coordination Against Hunger (CGFome), between 2003 and 2016. 16

124

L. Trajber Waisbich

3.2  I ssues: Monitoring Global Footprints and the Challenges to Forge Global-Domestic Thematic Linkages An additional element in the characterisation of civil society engagement delves into the issues driving mobilisation (or the what question). Three major motivations have drove Brazilian civil society actors’ political and policy activism throughout the PT era: the will to participate as implementing actors in cooperation projects with Africa, the will to monitor the impacts of ‘Brazilian global footprints’ and the will to participate in the decision-making process. Together, they reveal intentions to influence and dispute the internationalisation of the Brazilian state, the diffusion of its public policies and the internationalisation of Brazilian state and private capital and to contain what was perceived as (direct or indirect) negative social, environmental and development impacts of Brazil’s global presence. In order to make their claims legible and legitimate, a particularly frequent discursive frame mobilised by national social groups was the one of affectedness, of being negatively ‘impacted’ or ‘affected’ by SSC initiatives. This is found, for instance, in the Brazilian Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB  – Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens) and in the International Articulation of People Affected by Vale (AIAV  – Articulação Internacional dos Atingidos pela Vale). Such affectedness-based mobilisation is deeply connected to the internationalisation of domestic coalitions and contentious politics beyond Brazilian borders, as vividly illustrated by the case of Brazil-Africa SSC agricultural development initiatives and by the mobilisation around BNDES support to infrastructure building in Africa (through its Exim Bank scheme19). Both are highly fragmented and disputed policy realms domestically, whose conflicts have been internationalised (or exported) abroad through state and non-state initiatives in Africa (Pierri 2013; Cabral et al. 2013). Brazilian civil society mobilisation in Africa thus became an extension of the struggles already fought domestically. Moreover, transnational/cross-regional alliances to challenge BNDES and BRICS/NDB operations or to challenge Brazilian agricultural investments in Africa, such as the ProSAVANA programme, are treated by Brazilian domestic civil society actors as being interconnected. They are not only about being responsive to or in solidarity with African struggles but also about being partners in a common struggle to influence or contest the Brazilian state and its companies. This was particularly visible in the ways domestic groups in Brazil and Mozambique framed their opposition to ProSAVANA as a struggle against land grabbing in Africa (Aguiar and Pacheco 2016), an increasing internationally visible framing that could grant them symbolic, political and material resources to challenge Brazilian expansion in Africa. The same could be said about the affectedness framing in the resistance against extractive industries by the ‘Affected by Vale’, also in Mozambique (Cezne 2019). Those fears and the framings they carry have been powerful social m ­ obilisers,

19

 See, for instance, Cardoso et al. (2015) and Conectas (2018).

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

125

even if not all predicted damages occurred, including in the case of ProSAVANA where the investment stream of the programme did not take off20. A second type of mobilising issue, albeit relatively less frequent than the previous one, was particular country issues. Those have also triggered joint mobilisation between African and Brazilian civil society actors, most notably in case of human rights campaigns targeting BFP stances in Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau or Mozambique under a solidarity framing (Asano and Nascimento 2015). Led by African diasporas in Brazil or Brazilian rights groups, this activism was more circumscribed and less systematic, and by virtue of being inspired by universalist framing of the global human rights movement, they did not systematically attempt to draw the linkages connecting particular human rights violations in African countries to domestic human rights situation in Brazil. Speaking of linkages, a particularly acute missing link has been the issue of race. Despite a growing effort (strongly led by the Brazilian Black Movement) to render official not only the recognition of African heritage in Brazilian history and culture but also the negative legacies of slavery in perpetuating the marginalisation of people of African descent in Brazil, this dimension was not systematically singled out in Brazilian SSC initiatives with Africa. This was despite the fact that social movements (including the Black Movement), NGOs and leftist academics gravitating around the PT contributed to frame the party agenda towards Africa. They did so in close connection to domestic policies of integrating Afro-Brazilians, stressing the moral imperative of building ties given Africa’s poorer status and cross-regional connections through slavery (Dye and Alencastro 2020). Yet the Black Movement did not systematically engage the Brazilian state on Brazil-Africa relations. Diaspora politics and student mobility might be one exception to this rule, politicising race relations in Brazil and Brazil-Africa relations, but those have been mostly raised in academic spaces and in few media pieces (e.g. Borges 2007; Dos Santos 2012), with little reverberation on official SSC initiatives or public debates on Brazil-Africa relations during this period. Another circumscribed exception is found in the case of the PAA Africa initiative on food security and school feeding, where Consea participated in the monitoring of PAA Africa and representatives of the Black Movement inside the council – namely, from the Traditional People of African Descent Food and Nutritional Security Forum (Fonsanpotma  – Fórum Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional dos Povos Tradicionais de Matriz Africana) – also took part  Land grabbing by rising powers in Africa, including Brazil, remains a controversial debate. On the one hand, civil society groups have extensively mobilised against it, while the issue was repeatedly denied by governmental actors who promoted private investments. Recent studies have shed complexity into the debate by arguing that ‘the scramble for Africa’ by rising powers was not what initially expected or announced due to, among others, failed deals and media alarmism (Moyo 2019). The authors also argue that new or emerging powers are not the main sources of land-related issues in Africa, but their increased presence (as investors in Africa) has generated new forms of resistance from below, such as in Ethiopia (related to Indian investments) or in Mozambique (related to Brazilian investments). Moyo and colleagues also firmly state that ‘China grabs’ have been over-represented and exaggerated in the West even if, so far, they have delivered little benefits for Africa (in terms of economic transformation).

20

126

L. Trajber Waisbich

in some activities. Their participation in Consea’s monitoring of PAA Africa was framed as a form of ‘reparation for the crime of slavery’. As a reparation, SSC offered opportunities to African people and people from African descent in Brazil to exchange and donate to each other. Forum representatives were nonetheless critical to the whiteness in Brazilian official SSC, manifested in the lack of ‘cooperantes’: frontline development workers, including diplomats, managers, technical experts who were Black and/or traditional afro-descendants (PAA Africa 2015). The invisibility of race within this agenda requires further exploration, which falls outside the scope of this chapter. However, I offer some initial reflections on why this was the case: first, due to the still limited constituency of Brazilian civil society actors taking part of SSC debates (Cabral and Leite 2015), often dominated by a reduced niche of professionalised NGOs (Pomeroy and Waisbich 2019), not uncommonly majorly White, and second, due to the particular mobilisation strategies adopted by the Brazilian Black Movement in the early twenty-first century and the challenges encountered in internationalising their struggles, which then translated into inconsistent engagement with the issue of Brazilian growing exchanges with the African continent. Another important factor is that Brazilian official SSC has ambiguously embraced the topic of race. Brazil’s official solidarity with Africa – particularly during Lula da Silva’s government – was perceived by some as not free from contradictions, when considering Brazilian historical stances towards decolonisation of lusophone Africa. The very fact that most Brazilian ‘cooperantes’ tended to be light-skinned further substantiates what Cesarino (2019, 116) calls the ‘complicated interplay between domestic and international racial politics and coloniality relations underlying Brazil’s South-South efforts towards the African continent, both contemporarily and in the past’21. Critical voices have also pointed to how Brazilian technical cooperation has pictured Africa in a paternalistic way: exchanges have often been about Brazil unidirectionally sharing or transferring its own policy solutions, hence missing the opportunity to create mutual exchanges and mutual learning, also at the technical level (PAA Africa 2015). On a more hopeful note, other scholars suggest that the re-emergence of a national Black Movement in Brazil in recent years could possibly lay the ground for a new relationship with Africa (Moyo 2019), further reinforced by the greater access of afro-descendants into power positions, including those dealing with development cooperation. Together, those changes can also generate, in the future, new forms of social activism and foster the construction of new spaces and interfaces where race issues could be discussed in SSC, thus serving as an opportunity for Brazil to rethink horizontality and mutually learn in its partnerships.

 Brazilian ambassador Irene Gala, a major expert in Brazil-Africa relations, echoed this view in a recent interview to BBC. See Mendes (2019).

21

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

127

4  Conclusion Brazil-Africa partnerships have become a key feature of BFP landscape in the turn of the new century. A key component of the broader umbrella of Brazil’s South-­ South partnerships under the PT era, Brazil-Africa relations also became a highly disputed agenda. This chapter unpacked Brazilian civil society mobilisation in this agenda as lenses into the contested nature of Brazilian foreign policymaking towards Africa and its outcomes. In this conclusion, I revisit the main features of this engagement and also sketch some of the emerging forms of engagement in the post-PT era. Combining foreign policy analysis, participation and transnational social movements studies, this chapter discussed who in Brazilian civil society sought to participate and engage with, influence and/or resist governmental initiatives with Africa, under the broader South-South axis, the main issues driving their collective action and the coexisting forms of interacting with the Brazilian state around this topic. The chapter mapped the wide range of forms of collective action while revisiting some emblematic cases such as the cross-regional ‘No to ProSAVANA campaign’ (linking Mozambican, Brazilian and Japanese activists) and the coalitions watchdogging Brazilian public-private investments in Africa and monitoring the BNDES and the BRICS-led NDB. It located those forms of activism within the re-­emergence phase of Brazilian SSC, which coincided with the PT’s administrations (2003–2016). This context offered social groups significant political opportunity structures (material and ideational) to forge a new set of collaborative state-society interfaces in Brazil and enabled new forms of transnational civil society linkages between Brazilian and African activists to challenge the emerging Brazilian footprints in Africa. Civil society engagement was multifaceted and responded to the growing perception by a range of different domestic groups of the increasing ‘distributive character’ of BPF (Lima 2000). Civil society actors saw themselves as stakeholders but also directly or indirectly affected by those relations. Different types of stakes and levels of affectedness help to explain variation in mobilisation intensity but also intra-civil society divergences, tensions and conflicts. Civil society actors were sources of knowledge (hands-on, technical, analytical) as much as resources (political, symbolic and material). They connected themselves to other actors globally and were able to mobilise resources for Brazilian SSC and to discuss Brazilian SSC in Africa. Civil society actors also became a key component of an emerging domestic constituency supporting SSC in Brazil and not in an acritical manner. In some regard, civil society’s constant interest in the agenda holds an important key for the sustainability of Brazil-Africa relations, considering the oscillations in the official side (Suyama et al. 2016) and the profound questionings the South-South axis of BFP received from the political opposition during PT’s rule as well as in the current scenario. The most active civil society engagement remained concentrated around a few agendas (viz. agricultural development, development finance and infrastructure building and, to a lesser extent, human rights) and actors (viz. professionalised

128

L. Trajber Waisbich

NGOs in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia and, to a lesser extent, highly organised grassroot social movements connected to these NGOs). This concentration can be explained by the very nature of the initiatives with Africa and how they were perceived by national civil society actors as affecting their own interests or livelihoods but also by the material and symbolic political opportunity structures – both in Brazil and transnationally  – for civil society actors to act on those same issues. Equally important, social actors’ engagement with Brazil-Africa SSC exchanges, in terms of policy advocacy work but also contestation, disagreement and dissent, represented privileged sites where to observe the politicisation and social problematisation of BFP.  Prevailing conceptions of social participation in Brazil, enshrined in the national constitution and infused in several policy systems, remain absent from the broader foreign policy field in Brazil. They are also absent from global development cooperation approaches, where social participation is often limited to consultations with beneficiaries, downplaying the idea that civil society could be a legitimate actor in the policy process. When formal, institutionalised dialogue channels were absent or dysfunctional, more radical contestation forms of mobilisation emerged. As for the emerging forms of engagement in the post-PT era, radical political changes in Brazil starting with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and followed by the election of extreme-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 have significantly altered the South-South and Brazil-Africa agendas. The rise of Bolsonaro deeply affects prevailing modes of engagement. The low priority, if not complete disdain, granted by the current national leadership to Brazil-Africa relations and to South-South relations more broadly points to a reversal in the previous trend of expansion and diversification of Brazilian civil society actors’ policy engagement. Thinking on what Brazil-Africa SSC could look in the decade ahead, several trends are discernible: first, the demobilisation of several national civil society organisations from watchdogging Brazilian global footprints, including BRICS/ NDB agendas. This can be explained by the fact that Brazilian global political activism and SSC have progressively receded in the past five years (Suyama et al. 2016; Marcondes and Mawdsley 2017; Cesarino 2019), making the critical collaboration paradigm less frequent because state activism was itself in retreat. This trend has accentuated dramatically under Bolsonaro, with those still working on SSC in the federal government adopting a very cautious, low-profile, survival strategy and hence limiting their dialogue with several of the groups that have most closely followed the agenda under the PT rule. At the same time, organisations themselves have disengaged due to changes in their strategical priorities considering the acceleration of the social, political and economic crisis in Brazil and the need for CSOs to look inwards and ‘act domestically first’. Lack of funding, including international resources that had poured over Brazilian CSOs when watchdogging ‘Global Brazil’, was also a priority for other major international organisations in the early years and also contributed to the dehydration of Brazilian civil society activism on the SSC and Brazil-Africa agendas.

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

129

Another trend, particularly relevant to those involved in implementing South-­ South technical cooperation in the social sector, is to have CSOs by-passing the state (most notably under a federal administration that has showed little interest on those matters) and doing technical cooperation autonomously, directly with international organisations or with subnational governments. This is already happening in the case of the technical cooperation partnership between FAO and the Brazilian civil society organisation Brazilian Semi-Arid Articulation (ASA – Articulação no Semiárido Brasileiro) on rainwater harvesting and storage systems (cisterns), in the Sahel region22. FAO currently facilitates the sharing of this community-focus cisterns technology developed by Brazil, through the programme ‘One Million Cisterns’ of the then Ministry of Social Development23. The original Brazilian programme, initiated in 2003, was designed, developed and managed by ASA, making it an ideal partner for FAO and turning redundant the partnership with federal bureaucracies. Finally, for those groups that were and have remained active in the last few years, one can also see signs of the progressive end of dual engagement. Collaborative agendas between the so-called progressive/leftists NGOs and the Brazilian state, governed since 2018 by an extreme-right government, became rare. At the same time, opposition and antagonism domestically might lead to the expansion of more contentious and resistant forms of mobilisation at home and abroad, something already visible in transnational agendas such as environmental protection and international migration. This context also provides opportunities to forge new types of alliances from below, to either re-engage more openly some state bodies (including the Judiciary) or to resist state and private sector actions on the ground through renewed prisms and strategies in a less enabling environment. The civil society-led 2019 counter BRICS summit, held in Brasilia, brought a flavour of that, featuring a low-profile but openly antagonistic agenda towards the current national government. The gathering was led by critical academics and active opposition social groups and even key figures from the former PT administration (such as the MST, the former Brazilian Vice President of the NDB Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., Congresswoman Jandira Feghali from PCdoB and former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim). In the previous counter summits, including the one held in 2014  in Fortaleza, MST was present but not leading on the Brazilian side. This role was actually played by the Brazilian Network for the Integration of Peoples (REBRIP – Rede Brasileira Pela Integração dos Povos), both in the parallel activities around the 2014 summit in Brazil but also in all the subsequent BRICS-related events and in advocacy work on the NDB. Other co-organisers of the 2019 edition, such as the Brazilian chapter of the World March of Women, participated in the 2014 summit in Brazil, but did not consistently attended subsequent events. As this example shows, the current context can bring new participation and mobilisation dynamics. The

 See more on the project at http://www.fao.org/3/ca0882en/CA0882EN.pdf.  In early 2019, the former MDS was extinguished and incorporated into the new Ministry of Citizenship.

22 23

130

L. Trajber Waisbich

reflux or retreat from those who were more politically engaged until 2016 does not precludes new actors, such as religious groups closer to Bolsonaro, and sometimes even old ones, like social movements traditionally closer to the PT such as the MST, from engaging and occupying the spaces (either the collaborative or the resistance ones) once inhabited by others. Brazilian civil society will have to reinvent its Africa agenda in a context where critical collaboration with the state is no longer possible. This might actually provide national groups with an opportunity to set the agenda for the coming years rather than respond to a state/private sector-led Africa priorities, reinforcing the connections between developmental struggles in both sides of the Atlantic.

References Agência Brasileira de Cooperação. 2019. 335 Entidades Brasileiras Parceiras da ABC na Prestação de Cooperação Sul-Sul. ABC. http://www.abc.gov.br/Gestao/EntidadesParceiras. Accessed 19 November 2019. Aguiar, Diana, and Maria Emília Pacheco. 2016. A Cooperação Sul-Sul dos Povos do Brasil e de Moçambique: Memória da Resistência ao ProSavana e Análise Crítica de seu Plano Diretor. Rio de Janeiro: FASE. Articulação, S.U.L., and Oxfam Brasil. 2018. À Procura da Cooperação Sul-Sul no Orçamento Federal. São Paulo: ASUL/Oxfam Brasil. Asano, Camila, and Jefferson Nascimento. 2015. Arms as foreign policy: The case of Brazil. SUR 12 (22): 39–50. Berrón, Gonzalo, and Maria Brant. 2015. Expertise, Disputa Política ou Solidariedade? Variações sobre o Engajamento da Sociedade Civil Brasileira na Cooperação Sul-Sul. In Política externa brasileira, cooperação sul-sul e negociações internacionais, ed. Haroldo Ramazini Júnior and Luis Fernando Ayerbe, 251–284. São Paulo: Cultura Acadêmica. Bond, Patrick, and Ana Garcia, eds. 2015. BRICS: an anti-capitalist critique. London: Pluto Press. Borges, Juliana. 2007. Das novelas brasileiras ao mercado popular da África, Repórter Brasil, March 6. http://reporterbrasil.org.br/2007/04/das-novelas-brasileiras-aos-mercadospopularesda-frica/. Accessed 15 September 2019. Cabral, Lídia, and Iara Leite. 2015. ProSAVANA and the expanding scope of accountability in Brazil’s development cooperation. Global Policy 6 (4): 435–445. Cabral, Lídia, Alex Shankland, Arilson Favareto, and Alcides Costa Vaz. 2013. Brazil-Africa agricultural cooperation encounters: drivers, narratives and imaginaries of Africa and development. IDS Bulletin 44 (4): 53–68. Cardoso, Alessandra, Caio Silva Borges, and Maria Elena Rodriguez, eds. 2015. Política Socioambiental do BNDES: Presente e Futuro. Brasília: INESC. Cesarino, Letícia M. 2019. Doing research on unstable ground. The ebb and flow of Brazilian South–South cooperation, from Lula to Bolsonaro. In Researching South-South development cooperation. The politics of knowledge production, ed. Emma Mawdsley, Elsje Fourie, and Wiebe Nauta, 109–122. London: Routledge. Cezne, Eric. 2019. Forging transnational ties from below: Challenging the Brazilian mining giant Vale S.A. across the South Atlantic. The Extractive Industries and Society 6 (4): 1174–1183. Chichava, Sergio, and Chris Alden. 2017. Civil society and the opposition to ProSavana in Mozambique: End of the line? In Mozambique and Brazil: Forging new partnerships or developing dependency? ed. Chris Alden, Sergio Chichava, and Ana Cristian Alves, 130–143. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.

Participation, Critical Support and Disagreement: Brazil-Africa Relations…

131

Coalition for Human Rights in Development. 2017. The BRICS New Development Bank Strategy. A civil society perspective for truly sustainable infrastructure and transformative development cooperation. https://rightsindevelopment.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Folheto-TheBRICS-Sustainable2.pdf. Accessed 18 May 2020. Conectas Direitos Humanos. 2018. Banco Nacional, Impactos Globais: O apoio do BNDES à exportação de bens e serviços de engenharia e seus efeitos sobre o meio ambiente e os direitos humanos. In Conectas Direitos Humanos. São Paulo. Corrêa, Sonia, and Eduardo Homem. 1977. Moçambique. Primeiras machambas. Rio de Janeiro: Margem. Dolcetti-Marcolini, Michele. 2014. La participación de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en la Cooperación Sur-Sur de Brasil: buscando un enfoque integral de participación. Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo 3 (2): 130–147. Dye, Barnaby, and Mathias Alencastro. 2020. Debunking Brazilian Exceptionalism in Its Africa Relations: Evidence from Angola and Tanzania. Global Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360 0826.2020.1722617. Gaventa, John. 2006. Finding the spaces for change: A power analysis. IDS Bulletin 37 (6): 23–33. Hill, Christopher. 2003. The changing politics of foreign policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, and Agência Brasileira de Cooperação. 2018. Relatório Cobradi: Cooperação Brasileira para o Desenvolvimento Internacional. Levantamento 2014-­ 2016. Brasília: IPEA/ABC. Leite, Iara C., Bianca Suyama, Laura T. Waisbich, and Melissa Pomeroy. 2014. Brazil’s engagement in international development cooperation: The state of the debate. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Lima, Maria Regina. 2000. Instituições Democráticas e Política Exterior. Contexto Internacional 22 (2): 265–303. Lopes, Dawisson B. 2010. Da Razão de Estado ao Republicanismo Mitigado: A Plausibilidade de uma Política Externa Democraticamente Orientada no Brasil Contemporâneo. PhD dissertation. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Marcondes, Danilo, and Emma Mawdsley. 2017. South–South in retreat? The transitions from Lula to Rousseff to Temer and Brazilian development cooperation. International Affairs 93 (3): 681–699. Mawdsley, Emma. 2019. South–South Cooperation 3.0? Managing the consequences of success in the decade ahead. Oxford Development Studies 47 (3): 259–274. Mendes, Vinícius. 2019. Consciência Negra: 'África pode ajudar Brasil a lidar com racismo', diz embaixadora que atua há 3 décadas no continente. BBC Brasil, November 19. https://www.bbc. com/portuguese/amp/brasil-50441334#click=https://t.co/JyuzLw8ijs. Accessed 18 May 2020. Milani, Carlos, and Letícia Pinheiro. 2013. Política Externa Brasileira: Os Desafios de sua Caracterização como Política Pública. Contexto Internacional 35 (1): 11–41. Milhorance, Carolina. 2013. A política de cooperação do Brasil com a África Subsaariana no setor rural: transferência e inovação na difusão de políticas públicas. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 56 (2): 5–22. Milhorance, Carolina, and Marcel Bursztyn. 2017. South-South Civil Society partnerships: Renewed ties of political contention and policy building. Development Policy Review 35: 80–95. Milhorance, Carolina, and Folashade Soule-Kohndou. 2017. South-South cooperation and change in international organizations. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations 23 (3): 461–481. Moyo, Sam. 2019. In Reclaiming Africa: Scramble and resistance in the 21st century, ed. Praveen Jha and Paris Yeros. Singapore: Springer. PAA Africa. 2015. O PAA África e a participação da sociedade civil: visões, limites, e caminhos para o futuro. Brasília: PAA Africa. Peoples’ BRICS. 2017. New Delhi declaration: New development bank – peoples’ perspectives. New Delhi: Peoples’ Forum on BRICS.

132

L. Trajber Waisbich

Pierri, Francesco M. 2013. How Brazil’s agrarian dynamics shape development cooperation in Africa. IDS Bulletin 44 (4): 69–79. Pires, Roberto C., and Alexander C.N. Vaz. 2014. Para além da participação: interfaces socioestatais no governo federal. Lua Nova (93): 61–91. PLAN, and Articulação SUL. 2016. Avaliação do Projeto ‘Apoio ao Setor Algodoeiro dos Países do C-4’ (Benin, Burquina Faso, Chade e Mali). São Paulo: PLAN/Articulação SUL. Pomeroy, Melissa, and Daniel Silva. 2017. Articulando resistências no Sul Global. São Paulo: Observatório Brasil e o Sul. Pomeroy, Melissa, and Laura Waisbich. 2019. Formatos e Determinantes da Participação Social em agendas da Política Externa Brasileira. Revista Brasileira de Políticas Públicas e Internacionais 4 (1): 105–130. Pomeroy, Melissa, Alex Shankland, Adele Poskitt, Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay, and Rajesh Tandon. 2016. Civil Society, BRICS and international development cooperation: Perspectives from India, South Africa and Brazil. In BRICS in international development, ed. Gu Jin, Alex Shankland, and Anuradha Chenoy, 169–206. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Poskitt, Adele, Alex Shankland, and Katia Taela. 2016. Civil Society from the BRICS: Emerging Roles in the New International Development Landscape. IDS Evidence Report 173. Sanchez, Michelle R., Elaini C.G. Silva, Evorah L. Cardoso, and Priscila Specie. 2006. Política Externa Como Política Pública: Uma Análise Pela Regulamentação Constitucional Brasileira (1967–1988). Revista de Sociologia e Política 27: 125–143. Santos, José F. 2012. A formação de Angola independente, o “Brasil como parâmetro?”. Projeto História 44: 367–377. Santos, Tacilla da Costa e Sá Siqueira, and Elsa Sousa Kraychete. 2016. ‘A Cooperação Para o Desenvolvimento Entre o Brasil e a África: Um Olhar Sobre a Presença de Organizações Da Sociedade Civil Brasileira Em Moçambique’. Contra Relatos Desde El Sur 13: 25–34. Shankland, Alex, and Euclides Gonçalves. 2016. Imagining agricultural development in South-­ South cooperation? The contestation and transformation of ProSAVANA. World Development 81: 35–46. Sierra, Jasmin, and Kathryn Hochstetler. 2017. Transnational activist networks and rising powers: Transparency and environmental concerns in the Brazilian National Development Bank. International Studies Quarterly 61 (4): 760–773. Stone, Diane, Osmany Porto de Oliveira, and Leslie A. Pal. 2019. Transnational policy transfer: The circulation of ideas, power and development models. Policy and Society 39 (1): 1–18. Suyama, Bianca, and Luara Lopes. 2012. Reinventando a Cooperação Internacional para o Desenvolvimento: Incluindo a sociedade civil. Revista de Humanização do Desenvolvimento 2: 39–42. Suyama, Bianca, and Melissa Pomeroy. 2015. Supporting ‘Autonomy and Resistance’: the Brazil-­ Mozambique-­South Africa native seed bank project (No. Case Study 4). Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Suyama, Bianca, Laura T. Waisbich, and Iara C. Leite. 2016. Brazil as a development partner under Lula and Rousseff: Shifts and continuities. In The BRICS in international development, ed. Jing Gu, Alex Shankland, and Anuradha Chenoy, 25–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Waisbich, Laura T. 2014. Transnationalisation as Mediation: Uyghur's Rights-Based Mobilisation Outside China. In Mediated citizenship. The informal politics of speaking for citizens in the Global South, ed. Bettina von Lieres and Laurence Piper, 219–223. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2016. Diverse voices: Civil society at the 8th BRICS summit. Sexuality Policy Watch. http://sxpolitics.org/diverse-voices-a-brief-account-on-the-civil-society-spaces-at-the-margins-of-the-8th-brics-summit-in-india/16206. Accessed 18 May 2020. Waisbich, Laura T., Melissa Pomeroy, and Iara C. Leite. forthcoming. Travelling across developing countries: Unpacking the role of South-South Cooperation and civil society in policy transfer. In Handbook of policy transfer research, ed. Osmany Porto de Oliveira. Cheltenham and Camberley: Edward Elgar. World Food Programme. 2017. Impact evaluation report: Centre of excellence against hunger. Brasilia: WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger.

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa Pedro Seabra and Danilo Marcondes

1  Introduction The external provision of security capabilities to African countries is often characterized by its restriction to a select pool of international stakeholders (Ismail and Skons 2014). Attempting to depict novel actors aiming to break through in such landscape can thus prove in itself a recurrent, if not difficult, task. However, the story of Brazil as a contemporary security actor in Africa in its own right has taken an even more peculiar turn. Marked by quick gains and an equally quick recognition over a short period of time, it has also been followed by an equally quick turnaround which has led, as of 2020, to a more subdued profile and corresponding disengagement with African security needs. In particular, deep economic and political woes in Brazil have exposed the fragilities at the core of what was offered during a previous period of considerable expansion towards Africa. This, in turn, has incited legitimate questions over a supposedly alternative way of providing security capabilities that sought to go beyond traditional partners on the ground. How to frame this fast-­paced change in a sectorial niche known for understated gains and painstaking confidence-­building steps? And how to pinpoint possible venues of renewed interest?

P. Seabra (*) Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] D. Marcondes Brazilian War College (ESG – Escola Superior de Guerra), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_9

133

134

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

Drawing on a review of existing scholarly work as well as official diplomatic documentation recently declassified under Brazil’s Law for Information Access,1 we explore the main travails in this domain, which have compromised much of the gains previously obtained throughout the African continent. The chapter begins by providing a general balance of the progress achieved between 2003 and 2016, followed by the highlights of the recent downturn. We then analyze a specific subdomain, namely, the inroads carried out at the defence industry level, in order to showcase the promises and contradictions often associated to what the country has offered across the Atlantic. We conclude by presenting some opportunities for a new pickup of Brazilian interest in this area in the middle and long run.

2  The Rise (2003–2016) From 2003 onwards, Brazil embarked on an expansive agenda towards Africa, building upon key political, economic and cooperation modes of engagement, all the while benefiting from high-level political interest for African issues. In this context, other areas were also elevated to new levels of priority and began to receive corresponding focus from Brazilian officials who identified further opportunities for an increased external profile. A loose combination made up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, with the support of the different branches of the Armed Forces, soon followed suit and promptly recognized defence issues as a niche where Brazil had yet to make significant strides but which held considerable potential for growth. The combination of these actors sought to put into practice a new collective agenda, duly formalized by the country’s National Defence Policy (2005), National Defence Strategy (2008) and Defence White Book (2012). This triad of documents called for the increase of defence cooperation connections with countries across the Atlantic and into Africa, as part of Brazil’s own strategic environment: to invest in this kind of relations was therefore to invest in Brazil’s own national security interests. However, the accomplishment of this agenda required improved coordination between every putative domestic player. The last 2 years of President Lula’s second term, in particular, proved significant in that regard. In 2009, acknowledging the need for increased intergovernmental interactions, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence jointly requested Brazilian embassies in Africa to map the existing defence cooperation outlook in the countries under their responsibility. That request included the size and composition of local armed forces, the main external p­ roviders of military equipment and training, existing initiatives already involving Brazil and any record of prior military cooperation engagement with

1  The chapter benefits from access to diplomatic communication exchanged between the Secretary General of Foreign Affairs (SERE  – Secretaria de Estado das Relações Exteriores) within the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and different Brazilian diplomatic representations in Africa, as well as official documentation produced by the Brazilian Ministry of Defence.

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

135

Brazil.2 A technical cooperation agreement was then signed in May 2010 between the Ministry of Defence and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC – Agência Brasileira de Cooperação) – itself a unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – in order to facilitate the analysis, approval and execution of South-South defence cooperation initiatives, including the participation of African military personnel in training opportunities in Brazil. Ties were also dully promoted through intense shuttle diplomacy. Defence Minister Nelson Jobim (2007–2011), for example, visited Cape Verde, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Namibia during one single trip between May and June 2009.3 In addition, Foreign Minister and later Defence Minister Celso Amorim (2003–2010, 2011–2015) was actively engaged in a wide range of international visits, seeking to include defence and military cooperation in the bilateral agenda between Brazil and different African countries.4 Likewise, Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota (2011–2013) used a November 2011 visit to Ghana to suggest that the two countries ought to engage in military cooperation.5 Even if with some variations, the sharing of agendas and priorities between both ministries as well as the personal engagement by the holders of such offices played a significant part in substantiating a public perception that strives were indeed being pursued in this area, under a concerted fashion. Concrete gains were soon in reach. The expansion of the defence attaché network provides a telling example. Prior to 2003, there were only a few Brazilian defence attaché positions in the African continent: Egypt (1975), Angola (1994) and South Africa (1995). The post-2003 period, however, marks the opening of different defence attaché offices, including in Namibia (2004), Mozambique (2004), Nigeria (2005), Senegal (2013) and Ethiopia (2014), with accreditation to other countries.6 These new posts placed Brazil in a privileged position to foster greater ties with African countries and allowed for greater regular contacts at a military level. The inherent status was also not negligible: in 2011, there were only 25 defence attachés in Nigeria, with Brazil as the only Latin American country represented on the ground.7 In addition, this period was marked by the signing of several bilateral defence cooperation agreements, including with Angola (2010), Equatorial Guinea (2010), Guinea-Bissau (2006), Mozambique (2009), Namibia (2009), Nigeria (2010), São Tomé and Príncipe (2010), Senegal (2010) and South Africa (2003). All of these agreements sought to lay forward a common framework while at the same time

 Circular cable 73076, date: 08/07/2009.  Circular cable 72303, date: 12/05/2009. 4  As Defence Minister, Amorim visited Morocco, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and the DRC. Information provided by the Brazilian Ministry of Defence. 5  Telegram 321 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 25/07/2012. 6  The mandate of Brazil’s defence attaché in Nigeria covers Ghana, while attachés in Senegal and Angola are responsible for Togo and Benin and São Tomé and Príncipe, respectively. Other specific arrangements include Morocco falling under the purview of the Brazilian defence attaché in Spain. 7  Telegram 621 from BRASEMB ABUJA to SERE, date: 13/10/2011. 2 3

136

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

providing formal guarantees over expenses, confidentiality and formal procedures (Seabra 2014, 87). Nonetheless, contrary to expectations, most were also not immediately implemented. Negotiations towards a bilateral defence cooperation agreement with Algeria, for example, began in 2009 and were completed in 2015, but as of 2020, the document was still under analysis by the Algerian Ministry of Defence. Similar hurdles were found on the Brazilian side, especially after the passing of the 2011 Law for Information Access, which required additional layers of bureaucracy before final ratification by the Brazilian Senate. In recognition of these formal hindrances, other opportunities were used to showcase potential defence capabilities to African countries. That included stopovers by Brazilian Navy vessels on African ports. In 2013, for example, a Brazilian offshore patrol vessel (OPV) paid port calls to Nouakchott (Mauritania), Dakar (Senegal), Tema (Ghana), Luanda (Angola) and Walvis Bay (Namibia), before arriving in Brazil. These visits were then used to complete naval exercises and promote greater interactions with local authorities while at the same time leaving the door open for potential business opportunities down the line.8 Multilateral frameworks, on the other hand, were routinely used to promote initiatives that Brazil was carrying out in this domain. The South Atlantic geographic purview, for instance, received considerable support through the revitalization of the Zone of Peace and Cooperation in the South Atlantic (ZOPACAS – Zona de Paz e Cooperação do Atlântico Sul) (Abdenur and Marcondes de Souza Neto 2014; Abdenur et  al. 2016). But the use of the India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum for regular naval exercises in the Atlantic as well as the high-level meetings associated to the defence configuration of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) also helped ensure Brazilian overtures received additional levels of regional clout and recognition by the international community at large. Yet, what contributed to the receptivity of Brazil’s cooperation during this period? Which traits paved the way for its perceived success? According to Brazilian diplomats, in Guinea-Bissau, local authorities emphasized how Brazilian support for the modernization of the country’s Armed Forces was helping in changing the “local military mentality, still marked by the revolutionary efforts of the independence effort and not by subordination to civilian power”.9 Even if such evaluation cannot be taken at face value, in this case, a common language and shared historical-­cultural background evidently assisted the scope and ambition behind such efforts. But even in non-Lusophone African countries, the focus appeared to be set on more practical dividends. After a visit to Brazil, officials from the Ghanaian Navy praised the courses and training opportunities from the

 In this case, when Brazil purchased the three OPV from a UK-based shipyard, it also purchased the building plants and the intellectual property rights to build similar ships and hence regular goodwill trips through several potential African buyers. Telegram 159 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 12/04/2013. 9  Official Message 244 from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Brazilian Ministry of Defence, date: 06/04/2009. 8

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

137

Brazilian Navy, especially because they had a more practical nature in comparison with courses offered by other partners, deemed more theoretical.10 In other words, Brazil appeared to have found a niche in terms of security provision that seemingly appealed to the pressing needs of their respective counterparts. On the other hand, not all Brazilian initiatives began entirely from scratch after 2003; in fact, some can be traced further back in time, in a demonstration of their skilful capitalization in service of a broader, more recent, strategic planning. The naval training operation in Namibia since the late 1990s (Seabra 2016), for example, provided considerable lessons for subsequent attempts to foster similar missions, such as the one in Cape Verde, opened in 2014. In these cases, the modus operandi was one and the same: to start small and flexible enough in order to promote further long-term contacts between the respective armed forces. The fact that these missions were often combined with a considerable increase in the provision of training opportunities in Brazilian military institutions – in partnership with ABC – only added further appeal to Brazil’s profile across the continent. It is also important to note that some initiatives originated from the African side, rather than being exclusively devised in Brasília alone. In 2008, it was the Angolan Ministry of the Interior that contacted the Brazilian embassy in Luanda over an agreement on cooperation in security and public order. This was to be a follow-up to an earlier agreement signed almost a decade earlier, the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on security and public order signed by the two countries in 2000.11 Likewise, in 2012, it was Gabon that first approached Brazil’s Secretariat of Institutional Security (GSI – Gabinete de Segurança Institucional) to help with the development of the Gabonese Special Forces as well as intelligence cooperation and institutional cooperation between the GSI and its Gabonese counterpart.12 This primary interest, in turn, can be explained by the broader goal shared by most African countries of trying to diversify the pool of pre-established cooperation partners. In the case of Angola, initiatives with Brazil were motivated by the desire to reduce foreign dependence in the acquisition of defence equipment.13 Brazil was interpreted as an alternative partner, particularly when compared to both North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and non-NATO actors. When providing an assessment in 2009, the Brazilian embassy in Luanda noted that “the costs associated with the existing cooperative initiatives are high and there are indications that the country is looking for alternatives to the Russian and Cuban cooperation, which have their own doctrine, and to the Portuguese cooperation, influenced by NATO”.14 Likewise, in 2009, the Brazilian embassy in Malabo identified the main interests of the Equatorial Guinean government to involve cooperation for the training of military personnel and the purchase of defence equipment, so as to diversify the number

 Telegram 52 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 05/02/2015.  Telegram 615 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 27/05/2008. 12  Telegram 392 from BRASEMB LIBREVILLE to SERE, date: 03/12/2013. 13  Document 3167/SCO3/SCAI/CAE/EMCFA-MD, date: 19 /03/2013. 14  Telegram 1340 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 31/07/2009. 10 11

138

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

of providers of training and equipment. At the time, the country’s largest partners were Russia and Israel.15 Overall, by early 2016, Brazil appeared in a rather established position. Having secured a sizeable level of recognition as a brewing security provider in its own right, Brazilian authorities could claim to be able to disburse significant training capabilities for foreign military personnel, on par with a sizeable high-level interest for the security needs of a plethora of African countries.

3  The Downturn (2016–…) Despite significant inroads over more than a decade, a deep retraction in terms of Brazilian engagement with Africa quickly became apparent from 2016 onwards. We identify three general sets of reasons that contributed to such an outcome. The first derived from the economic climate in Brazil, which dampened national growth expectations. The drop in international commodity prices and the following recession led to far less resources available for any expansive foreign agenda. The most immediate consequences were felt at the budgetary level, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ABC, the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces not exempted from the austerity drive. Brazil’s brewing naval operation in São Tomé and Príncipe, for instance, failed to be elevated to full mission status much like the mission in Cape Verde, as initially envisioned back in 2015. Other offers of training programs made towards African countries were also retracted or failed to be implemented at all. By late 2015, ABC informed the Ministry of Defence that, due to budgetary restrictions, it would not be able to financially support courses for African and American countries in the following year.16 A second hurdle resided in Brazil’s own political class. The tumultuous process of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment coupled with the swearing-in of Vice President Michel Temer as the new president in tandem with the Car Wash (Lava Jato) anti-corruption operation triggered a new cycle in Brazilian politics, with a corresponding impact on daily managerial tasks and foreign policy priorities. On the one hand, a revolving door in terms of key posts led to the standstill of many initiatives previously approved or announced. Between 2016 and 2018, Brazil witnessed three different Defence Ministers (Jacques Wagner, Aldo Rebelo and Raul Jungmann) as well as four different Foreign Ministers (Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, Mauro Vieira, José Serra and Aloysio Nunes). The impact on the bureaucratic apparatus was significant. On the other hand, a “new wave of contestation and opposition to South-South cooperation as a priority of Brazil’s international engagement” (Abdenur 2018, 191) affected a previous focus on Africa. The inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro on January 2019 further confirmed this trend.

 Telegram 104 from BRASEMB MALABO to SERE, date: 05/10/2009.  Official Message 890 from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Brazilian Ministry of Defence, date: 23/09/2015.

15 16

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

139

Finally, a third obstacle dealt with previously existing fragilities within the structural model put into place to sustain defence cooperation ties. Even though their root causes preceded this downturn, such fragilities became more difficult to ignore as Brazilian capabilities were stretched to the fullest. This was evidenced at multiple levels. The weak institutionalization of Brazilian cooperation, for one, had already displayed a lack of cohesiveness and predictability of operations, with effects on the chain of command. For example, when the Director General of Strategic Affairs and Military Cooperation of the Republic of Congo travelled to Brazil in June 2007, the Brazilian embassy in Libreville ended up only being informed of the visit once it had already started and was not aware if there had been any direct conversations between the Congolese official and the Brazilian Ministry of Defence.17 Likewise, irregular funding comprised another issue difficult to resolve that often led to the consideration of out-of-the box alternatives. When, in October 2011, Somali pirates attacked the drillship of Brazilian oil company Petrobrás, which was operating in Tanzanian territorial waters (Gozzi 2011), Brazil sought to expand defence cooperation with Tanzania. The Brazilian embassy in Dar es Salaam proposed the creation of a resident defence attaché position, under the responsibility of the Brazilian Navy. However, due to budgetary constraints, the embassy suggested Petrobrás could finance bilateral military cooperation projects in light of its interest in guaranteeing the security of operations in Tanzanian territorial waters.18 Meanwhile, delays in approving and implementing instruments that were expected to support bilateral initiatives continued to take hold. For example, a defence cooperation agreement signed with Nigeria in 2010 had to be adapted to meet the new requirements derived from Brazil’s Law for Information Access. After the Brazilian side suggested further alterations, the Nigerian side responded in 2018 by asking for a full renegotiation of the agreement in order to account for changes in their own defence cooperation interests.19 Such kind of delays in implementing cooperation due to the lack of ratification of defence agreements could have been avoided via specific arrangements. In the case of Angola, for instance, the lack of ratification by Brazil was bypassed with the creation of an interim bilateral committee aimed at meeting annually and providing follow-up to existing initiatives.20 The fact that such option was not pursued more broadly with regard to other partners attests to a measure of excessive formalism difficult to overcome and impeditive of greater creativity to accomplish proposed goals. The abovementioned episodes illustrate some of the internal strains present from the start that only became more pronounced and acute as resources dwindled and official priorities shifted away from Africa. However, these tokens also did not pre-

 Telegram 122 from BRASEMB LIBREVILLE, date: 01/06/2007.  Telegram 231 from BRASEMB DAR ES SALAM to SERE, date: 15/06/2015. 19   Telegraphic dispatch 49 to BRASEMB ABUJA, date: 22/05/2018; Telegram 176 from BRASEMB ABUJA to SERE, date: 05/07/2018; Telegram 280 from BRASEMB ABUJA to SERE, date: 16/10/2018. 20  Telegram 270 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 21/02/2013. 17 18

140

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

clude occasional developments in recent years. For example, in October 2016, Defence Minister Jungmann represented Brazil during the inauguration of Cape Verde’s President Jorge Carlos Fonseca, and both countries took the opportunity to sign a new defence cooperation agreement. Moreover, during a 2018 visit to Brazil by Botswana’s Defence Minister, the two countries signed a similar formal instrument, thus expanding the number of Brazilian defence partners beyond the South Atlantic. Yet, despite these positive signs, a general sense of unmet expectations still spread across the continent as they failed to match the impetus, both political- and resource-wise, of previous years.

4  At a Glance: Brazil’s Defence Industry and Africa Much like the overall inversions, specific subdomains of Brazil’s defence cooperation drive with Africa underwent a similar pattern of quick expansion followed by a subsequent drawdown. Heralded from the start as one of the linchpins of the newfound relations, investments by Brazil’s defence industry did not deviate from this trend. However, they also directly echoed earlier attempts in the 1980s, when Brazil developed a competitive defence industry aimed precisely at expanding its foothold in African and Middle Eastern countries (Franko-Jones 1994; Conca 1997; Moraes 2012). But despite benefiting from these prior experiences, the bulk of outcomes achieved during a period of considerable expansion were not exempted from a corresponding downturn.

4.1  H  ighlights of Brazil’s Defence Industry Push Towards Africa The most important industrial partnership that Brazil set up and still maintains with an African country in the defence sector is with South Africa. The two countries began developing the fifth-generation short-range air-to-air missile A-Darter in 2006, through a joint program between South African firm Denel Dynamics and Brazilian firms Avibrás, Mectron and Opto Eletrônica. The project, managed by a Brazilian Air Force team in South Africa, is often described as a successful partnership between equals, not only because both countries own the intellectual property rights but also because it has also contributed to the integration of South Africa and Brazilian technical teams.21 For Brazil, the A-Darter project was deemed of strategic importance given how its “cutting edge technology can also be applied for civilian use in a wide range of areas such as agriculture, radio communication and

21

 Telegram 1203 from BRASEMB PRETORIA to SERE, date: 25/10/2011.

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

141

oil exploration,” with a potential to encourage different public and private partnerships.22 However, the edge associated to this kind of joint operations remained largely restricted to endeavours with South Africa. For the most part, the remaining initiatives rolled out during the period of outreach to Africa were far more focused in concrete sales opportunities. In this regard, one of the most successful Brazilian products concerned Super Tucano light attack aircraft, designed and produced by the Brazilian Aeronautical Company (EMBRAER  – Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica). For African countries, the Super Tucano proved considerably attractive due to its more affordable price (compared to its competitors), its multipurpose role (for combat training as well as intelligence, surveillance and recognition operations, e.g.) and its easy maintenance. Three factors allowed Brazil to position such equipment in African markets. The first comprised the possibility of offering wholesale packages that combined both the respective products as well as the necessary technical assistance in order to operate and maintain them. For example, in 2009, Ghana began negotiations with EMBRAER, after different options of aircraft were presented to local authorities. At the time, Ghanaian officials stated their expectations that Brazil would provide financial backing to the sale of the aircrafts.23 Ghanaian Air Force officials reiterated their interest in purchasing the Super Tucano planes in 2013, and the sale of five Super Tucano, including logistical support and training, was then completed in 2015.24 Likewise, when the head of Mauritania’s Air Force visited Brazil in December 2011 to negotiate the sale of two Super Tucano planes, he expressed an interest in setting up a broader defence cooperation agenda that encompassed pilot training and the formation of pilots and technicians, including hosting Brazilian pilots and technicians in Mauritania. The contract signed during the visit was valued at US$40 million and included both the planes and the corresponding training package.25 A second key factor that assisted Brazilian defence exports consisted of a cascade effect, i.e. sales to one or to a group of countries raised the attention and interest of other states. When the Malian Minister of Defence visited Brazil in March 2015, for instance, he was introduced to the Super Tucano by EMBRAER officials and Brazilian authorities. At the time, he mentioned the decision to purchase the planes was motivated by the fact Senegal, Burkina Faso and Mauritania had already purchased that very same plane.26 Inroads in West Africa thus benefited from a ­succession of previous deals and from the increased sharing of experiences in the subregion over the reliability of Brazilian products.  Official Message 146 from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Brazilian Ministry of Defence, date: 05/03/2009. 23  Telegram 273 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 24/04/2009; Telegram 705 from BRASEMB ACRA to SERE, date: 30/09/2011. 24  Telegram 427 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 09/10/2013. 25  Telegraphic dispatch 4 from SERE to BRASEMB NOUAKCHOTT, date: 2/01/2012; Telegram 13 from BRASEMB NOUAKCHOTT to SERE, date: 18/01/2012. 26  Report 02/SCAI/CAE/EMCFA-MD, Strategic Affairs Division (Chefia de Assuntos Estratégicos), Department of International Affairs (SCAI – Sub-Chefia de Assuntos Internacionais), 2015. 22

142

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

A third factor dealt with the suitability of purpose often associated to Brazilian equipment. Sales to Mali, yet again, illustrate how Brazil was able to supply some of the immediate security needs of African countries, in this case the fighting against Boko Haram – an issue specifically brought up by the Malian Minister of Defence during the abovementioned aircraft purchase.27 Likewise, the Angolan Defence Minister mentioned in 2009 his country’s interest in purchasing an earlier version of the Super Tucano so as to use the aircraft for surveillance against illegal immigration in the border with the DRC.28 Brazilian authorities were also aware of competition from other actors. For example, in 2015, Brazil and Cameroun were negotiating the potential sale of six Super Tucano airplanes. Yet, Brazilian diplomats in Yaoundé warned support from the United States, France and the European Union in the fight against Boko Haram could mean that other countries would be better placed to present competing proposals, thus undermining negotiations with EMBRAER.29 Even though the airplane deal with Cameroun did not materialize, 12 Super Tucano planes were authorized for sale to Nigeria in 2018 for the very same purposes, after a 2-year negotiation process, which involved EMBRAER’s partner, US company Sierra Nevada Corporation, and required authorization by US officials. The planes will be built in EMBRAER’s facility in Florida, and the first units are expected to be delivered in 2021 (Kelly 2018; Sirota 2019). However, Brazil-Africa defence cooperation also went beyond the mere sale of defence products and included tailor-made initiatives, aimed at assisting African countries. For example, the Brazilian Army set up a military engineering advisor position with the Senegalese Army in 2015. Even though other countries like Germany and Spain were already present on the ground providing the same type of cooperation, Brazil still perceived it as a useful entry point for future business opportunities.30 The same occurred with Angola, where Brazil was identified as capable of providing “political, diplomatic and technical support in the process of marking the country’s continental shelf.” The Angolan government was particularly keen on obtaining Brazilian expertise in the demarcation of the country’s northern maritime frontier, with the Republic of the Congo and the DRC.31 To provide expertise in these subdomains was seen as paving the way for a more profitable relation down the line. In addition to the provision of expertise, Brazilian companies were also able to seize opportunities related to the infrastructural requirements of different African countries. For example, in 2014, Brazilian infrastructure company Contracta completed the construction of a hangar in the Ghanaian Air Force base in Accra. This was the first Brazilian construction work inaugurated in Ghana and was

 Report 02/SCAI/CAE/EMCFA-MD, Strategic Affairs Division (Chefia de Assuntos Estratégicos), Department of International Affairs (SCAI – Sub-Chefia de Assuntos Internacionais), 2015. 28  Official Message 414 from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Brazilian Ministry of Defence, date: 05/06/2009. 29  Telegram 56 from BRASEMB YAOUNDÉ to SERE, date: 04/02/2015. 30  Overseas Mission Report, military engineering advisor to the Senegalese Army, 2016–2017. 31  Telegram 1237 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 13/07/2010. 27

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

143

financed by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES  – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social).32 Geographically, Brazil’s efforts were more focused on traditional partners in the South Atlantic space and within lusophone Africa. But that did not prevent the expansion of defence industry ties with other African countries over the years. The cooperation with Algeria provides an interesting account of this aim to diversify partnerships. Brazil sold US$8.6 million worth of small arms to Algeria between 2002 and 2004 (Chade 2007). A Brazilian presidential visit to Algeria in February 2006 included a business delegation with representatives of defence companies.33 These efforts were reciprocated by Algerian authorities through a military mission in September 2006. In the same year, Algeria contacted two Brazilian companies, Odebrecht and Atech, to participate in a bid for the development of a technical report regarding the creation of a local research and technology institute on conventional weapons.34 Brazilian defence sales to other North African countries remained significant with Egypt, Algeria and Morocco often found within the ten largest importers of Brazilian military equipment between 2005 and 2014 (Magalhães 2016, 59). The small arms segment occupied a significant share of these sales. In fact, in 2014, “Egypt was the second largest client of (Brazilian small arms company) Taurus, only behind the US” (Magalhães 2016, 77).

4.2  F  ragilities of Brazil’s Defence Industry Push Towards Africa The expansion of Brazil’s role as a provider of defence products in Africa was not immune to a changing economic and political context. Four country cases  – Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, Angola and Mozambique – illustrate the fragilities of Brazil’s designs in this subdomain, summarized under a common pattern of promising contracts and announcements at first, subsequent backtrack by either Brazilian or African authorities and followed by the inevitable breakdown of the deal all together. In the case of Equatorial Guinea, the possibility of selling a Brazilian-made corvette amounted to one of the most ambitious attempts to promote Brazil-Africa defence trade. If completed, the sale of a large-scale warship would have been “the Brazilian Navy’s largest overseas sale, valued at US$450 million”.35 President Lula travelled to Malabo in July 2010 at the same time as the Brazilian Navy’s corvette

 Telegram 454 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 26/11/2014. Contracta signed the contract with the Ghanaian Ministry of Defence in February 2010. An additional clause was signed in September 2011 regarding financing by BNDES. See Telegram 705 from BRASEMB ACCRA to SERE, date: 30/09/2011. 33  Telegram 198 from BRASEMB ARGEL to SERE, date: 22/02/2006. 34  Telegram 702 from BRASEMB ARGEL to SERE, date: 01/08/2006. 35  Telegram 508 from BRASEMB MALABO to SERE, date: 31/12/2012. 32

144

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

Barroso visited the country, in a concerted move to both display and promote the ship before local authorities. Afterwards, the Brazilian Naval Projects Management Company (EMGEPRON – Empresa Gerencial de Projetos Navais) invited a delegation from Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Defence to Brazil to assess the possible sale of an equivalent vessel.36 The process even went as far as Equatoguinean President Teodoro Obiang constituting an official commission, including the country’s Ministers of Defence, Finance and Treasury, to examine the possibility of buying the ship.37 By 2013, the Brazilian ambassador in Malabo suggested the sale of an OPV as an alternative to a large warship, which would be “smaller, more agile and more economical”.38 Nonetheless, the sale was consecutively postponed until it was eventually cancelled. In 2014, Equatorial Guinea announced instead the incorporation of a frigate designed in the Ukraine (Nkala 2014). Negotiations with Senegal followed a similar pattern. In 2013, Brazil and Senegal signed a statement of intentions regarding the acquisition of naval equipment. Both parties agreed to begin negotiations over the future sale of two patrol ships as well as the creation of a professional qualification program for officers and corporals of the Senegalese Navy. The agreement was signed during the 2013 edition of a defence fair held in Rio de Janeiro, but as of 2020, neither the purchase nor the qualification program had yet advanced nor been implemented (Ministério da Defesa 2013). The case of naval cooperation with Angola also proved familiar enough. In 2013, the Brazilian embassy in Luanda noted that the navy was the most poorly equipped in terms of the three branches of the Angolan Armed Forces.39 When Defence Minister Amorim visited Angola that same year, he was accompanied by representatives from 14 of the main companies supplying the Brazilian military logistical system, with the explicit aim to boost Brazilian defence sales to Angola. The main topic discussed was “Brazilian cooperation for the launch of a defence industry in Angola, able to allow for the substitution of overseas purchases by the Angolan Armed Forces”.40 The following year, the Angolan and the Brazilian Defence Ministers signed a MoU related to the acquisition of seven offshore patrol vessels (of 500 tons each), with four to be built in Brazil and three to the built in Angola.41 As part of the agreement, the Brazilian Navy would provide technical capacitation for Angolan personnel to produce and operate the offshore patrol vessels.42 However, cooperation endeavours took a different turn when the

 Telegram 91 from BRASEMB MALABO to SERE, date: 17/03/2011.  Telegram 5 from BRASEMB MALABO to SERE, date: 12/01/2011. 38  Telegram 330 from BRASEMB MALABO to SERE, date: 12/09/2013. 39  Telegram 270 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 21/02/2013. 40  Telegram 270 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 21/02/2013. 41   The MoU was part of the Programme for the Development of Angolan Naval Power (PRONAVAL  – Programa de Desenvolvimento do Poder Naval de Angola), created to provide Angola with the appropriate means to control its maritime space and which included, in addition to the construction of ships, the construction of a naval ship building facility to be located about 200 km from Luanda. 42  Telegram 1164 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 09/09/2014; Telegram 814 from BRASEMB LUANDA to SERE, date: 11/09/2014. 36 37

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

145

Angolan government denounced the MoU and suspended its implementation in December 2014, in light of the “changes in circumstances from the date that the agreement had been signed” (Almeida Filho 2015). This sudden halt then led Angola to seek out other potential sellers, including German, Italian and Middle Eastern firms (Seabra and Abdenur 2018, 268). But this kind of challenges was not restricted to the sale of defence products alone. During his 2009 visit to Mozambique, Defence Minister Jobim announced the donation of three Tucano airplanes, pending approval by the Brazilian Congress.43 His successor, Defence Minister Amorim, promptly noticed that the donation of one type of aircraft could instigate the purchase of other types of aircraft: “you can donate the Tucano and then, who knows, you can sell the Super Tucano. I am not talking about something abstract since we have already sold a considerable number of Super Tucanos to African countries” (Asano and Nascimento 2015, 47). In 2011, as the deliberation process over the donation lingered on, Mozambican Defence Minister Filipe Nyusi confirmed his country’s interest in purchasing Super Tucano planes (Ministério da Defesa 2014). However, these developments coincided with a renewed conflict between the opposition (RENAMO) and the government in Mozambique in late 2013. Civil society organizations in Brazil criticized that the airplanes could be used in offensive operations, thus increasing tensions on the ground. This led to the inclusion of a clause requiring the equipment in question to only be used for training purposes (Asano and Nascimento 2015). Yet, by 2016, the donation process was still going through legislative analysis. Under the arguments that the Tucanos were needed for instruction training in Brazil after all and that their transportation to Mozambique would generate extra costs, President Temer then opted to rescind the original donation offer (Ramos 2016; Bussotti and Macamo 2018; Marcondes 2019). The examples above described invite a reflection about the different elements associated to the lack of success of some of the initiatives. Firstly, the impact of the Brazilian political and economic crisis was felt significantly in terms of export funding lines, which had been previously made available by BNDES as part of a broad political mandate to increase its focus on Africa. Much as they had been central in the past to foment the birth and development of most Brazilian defence firms, those funding lines remained paramount in order to pierce through an extremely competitive market in Africa; as they dried down, a key component of the contemporary outreach also disappeared. The fact that they were also contingent on the effective pardon of previous debts to the Brazilian state only reinforced their centrality in this process as an insurmountable obstacle, as evidenced in the case of Côte d’Ivoire.44 Secondly, the lack of a more aggressive strategy by Brazilian private actors towards African markets was repeatedly brought up during this period, to no avail. Due to a late internationalization start, most defence firms found few incentives to expand operations beyond the national market or the nearby region; when they did so, their inversions often proved sporadic and structurally dependent of significant governmental support. This kind of assessment had already been noted as early as

43 44

 Telegram 319 from BRASEMB MAPUTO to SERE, date: 27/03/2009.  Telegram 10 from BRASEMB ABIDJAN to SERE, date: 08/01/2013.

146

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

2006 by, for instance, the Brazilian embassy in Algeria, yet it continued to prevail in the following years: (…) there is a certain favourable predisposition about Brazil, that will have been strengthened by the Algerian military mission. However, in order for these efforts to translate into concrete businesses and increase bilateral cooperation, it will be necessary to sensitize Brazilian companies towards a more aggressive commercial promotion. The opportunities in the military area, although concrete, are theoretical and potential. The key to transform these opportunities into tangible business rests in, according to the local culture, the physical presence and in keeping relations up to date.45

However, some of the observed limitations also went beyond Brazil’s control, particularly when associated with issues faced by African countries themselves. Although there was a desire to increase defence cooperation, in some situations, this was not possible due to a number of impediments, of both financial and political nature. For example, in 2009, cuts in the Angolan defence budget due to the international financial crisis led investments in the Angolan Navy to be prioritized over other branches of the Angolan Armed Forces. At the time, this decision caused a delay in Brazil-Angolan negotiations related to the sale of Brazilian Tucano aircraft.46 The international sanctions regime also proved an unexpected obstacle. In 2009, the Brazilian embassy in Abidjan reported the interest of the Ivorian Armed Forces in “Brazilian military expertise” in order to “reinforce the professionalism” of local military personnel.47 When evaluating the request, however, officials in Brasília advised against it since challenges regarding the process of pacification and stabilization of the country could prove an obstacle to its implementation.48 The fact that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions regime on Côte d’Ivoire, established by UNSC resolution 1572 (2004) and renewed by resolution 1842 in 2008, included a prohibition on the provision of military training was also brought up as another formal impediment.49 Likewise, when EMBRAER tried to sell Super Tucano planes to Côte d’Ivoire in 2012, the deal hit a similar need for approval by the UN Sanctions Committee and subsequently broke down.

5  Conclusion After a period of marked and visible expansion, it is legitimate to ask what went wrong in Brazilian defence overtures towards Africa. The answer, however, hardly proves novel. Well-known factors such as “competition with partners from the Global North, the lack of financial resources to materialize aspirations as well as rapidly changing priorities in national capitals” (Marcondes et al. 2017, 212) played

 Telegram 957 from BRASEMB ARGEL to SERE, date: 16/10/2006.  Official Message 414 from Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Brazilian Ministry of Defence, date: 05/06/2009. 47  Telegram 195 from BRASEMB ABIDJAN to SERE, date: 24/06/2009. 48  Telegraphic dispatch 169 from SERE to BRASEMB ABIDJAN, date: 31/08/2009. 49  Telegraphic dispatch 176 from SERE to BRASEMB ABIDJAN, date: 04/09/2009. 45 46

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

147

a part in halting these particular transatlantic ties, actively promoted between 2003 and 2016. The case of Brazil’s defence industry, in particular, followed an all too familiar route and was also characterized by concrete advancements and occasional success inasmuch as it was bogged down by contradictions and a lack of cohesive official support to achieve the goals of sustainably expanding into Africa. What to expect ahead? On December 2019, Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo embarked on a 5-day tour of Africa, including visits to Cape Verde, Senegal, Nigeria and Angola. The visit emphasized the “security of the South Atlantic” and Brazil’s intention of becoming a full member of the G7++ Friends of the Gulf of Guinea initiative (Romildo 2019). In the meantime, the government’s new publicized initiative to support the Brazilian defence industry, including the exports of defence products, has the potential to maintain the private sector at the very least attentive of new opportunities (Oliveira 2020). Finally, the number of African resident attachés in Brazil remains for all purposes considerable – as of 2020, representatives from Angola, Cameroun, Egypt, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia were stationed in Brasília – proving that key official communication channels are still very much in place if relations were to pick up once more. Two domains might, however, warrant more dividends in the coming years due to the current national and international contexts. The first comprises peacekeeping. The appointment of Brazilian General Ricardo Augusto Ferreira Santos Neves on December 2019 as Force Commander of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) serves as an indication that the UN continues to count on regular Brazilian contributions to that specific mission. Santos Neves is the third Brazilian general to occupy the position, after General Elias Rodrigues Martins Filho (2018–2019) and General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz (2013–2015). In 2019, Brazil sent a team of instructors from the Brazilian Army’s Jungle Warfare Training Centre to provide on-site training to MONUSCO blue helmets from the Force Intervention Brigade. If resources are to remain scarce, this option might become an instrument of choice in order to maintain a minimal semblance of engagement with African security predicaments. The second domain is of a more geographic nature. For all purposes, East Africa remains largely underexplored in its defence cooperation potential. Recent initiatives illustrate how Brazilian actors are beginning to consider new opportunities. In 2017, Brazil’s Peacekeeping Training Centre (CCOPAB  – Centro Conjunto de Operações de Paz do Brasil) signed an agreement with its Ethiopian counterpart (CCOPAB 2017). Meanwhile, with Kenya, the Brazilian Army provided 4 weeks of training in project management in engineering at the Kenyan Humanitarian Support and Peace Operations School (HPSS) in Nairobi and as part of the United Nations Project for African Rapid Deployment of Engineering Capabilities (ARDEC), a UN Triangular Partnership Project (TPP), involving Brazil, Japan and Switzerland. The course included military personnel from Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. A second edition of the course took place in 2018 with a larger number of African countries, including military personnel from Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia (Exército Brasileiro 2018). The initiative is an example of a South-South cooperation activity funded by northern actors, which could signal a potentially alternative solution to Brazilian limitations in financing further activities with African countries.

148

P. Seabra and D. Marcondes

Overall, we expect future developments in terms of Brazil-Africa defence cooperation to focus on less flashy initiatives – which means they will also attract less political interest, given the reduced immediate dividends. At the same time, capacity-­building training in areas such as peacekeeping may allow Brazil to establish bridges and promote trust in the long run. The many challenges and limitations for Brazil-­Africa defence cooperation discussed here do not mean that the situation is irreversible or that Brazil’s image is irremediably tarnished, rather that it will require considerable new political and material impetus in order to be considered once more a worthy alternative in the security domain, as far as African countries are concerned. Acknowledgements  The views and opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the institutions to which they are affiliated to. Pedro Seabra would like to thank the support received by FCT, under grant SFRH/ BPD/116700/2016. Danilo Marcondes would like to thank the support received by CAPES/PRÓ-­ DEFESA (edital n. 27/2018), CNPq grant 439044/2018-9 and FAPERJ grant E-26/202.732/2019.

References Adbenur, Adriana Erthal, Frank Mattheis, and Pedro Seabra. 2016. An ocean for the Global South? Brazil and zone of peace and cooperation in the South Atlantic. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29(3): 1112–1131. Abdenur, Adriana Erthal. 2018. Brazil-Africa relations: From boom to bust. In Africa and the world: Bilateral and multilateral international diplomacy, ed. Dawn Nagar and Charles Mutasa, 189–208. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Abdenur, Adriana Erthal, and Danilo Marcondes de Souza Neto. 2014. O Brasil e a cooperação em defesa: a construção de uma identidade regional no Atlântico Sul. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 57 (1): 05–21. Almeida Filho, Francisco D. de. 2015. Brasil e os países da costa oeste africana e a segurança marítima no Atlântico Sul. Ações conjuntas entre o Brasil, Angola, Namíbia e África do Sul em prol da segurança marítima no Atlântico Sul. Dissertation, Rio de Janeiro: C-PEM-Escola de Guerra Naval. Asano, Camila, and Jefferson Nascimento. 2015. Armas como política externa: o caso brasileiro. SUR 12 (22): 41–53. Bussotti, Luca, and Ernesto Macamo. 2018. A Cooperação Bilateral Brasil-Moçambique, com Enfoque Especial na Área da Defesa. Caderno de Estudos Africanos 36: 113–136. Centro Conjunto de Operações de Paz do Brasil. 2017. CCOPAB’s instructor cooperates in training center in Africa. CCOPAB, September 22. http://www.ccopab.eb.mil.br/en/center-news/1452017/970-ccopab-s-instructor-cooperates-in-training-center-in-africa. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Chade, Jamil. 2007. Armas do Brasil vão para países em conflito. Estado de São Paulo, August 29. https://brasil.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,brasil-arma-paises-em-conflito,42730. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Conca, Ken. 1997. Manufacturing insecurity the rise and fall of Brazil’s military-industrial complex. Lynne Rienner: Boulder. Exército Brasileiro. 2018. Exército Brasileiro atua na África em cooperação com as Nações Unidas. Exército Brasileiro, September 21. https://www.eb.mil.br/web/noticias/noticiariodo-exercito/-/asset_publisher/MjaG93KcunQI/content/exercito-brasileiro-atua-na-africa-emcooperacao-com-as-nacoes-unidas. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Franko-Jones, Patrice. 1994. The Brazilian defense industry. New York: Westview Press.

In and Out and Out Again: The Travails of Brazil as a Security Provider in Africa

149

Gozzi, Ricardo. 2011. Tanzânia inibe ataque a navio a serviço da Petrobrás. Exame, October 4. https://exame.abril.com.br/negocios/tanzania-inibe-ataque-a-navio-a-servico-da-petrobras/. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Ismail, Olawale, and Elizabeth Skons, eds. 2014. Security activities of external actors in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, Fergus. 2018. Nigeria A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft contract finally lands. The Defence Post, November 29. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2018/11/29/nigeria-a-29-supertucano-contract-sierra-nevada/. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Magalhães, David A.M. 2016. A política brasileira de exportação de armas no contexto da revitalização da base industrial de defesa. PhD dissertation, São Paulo: UNESP/UNICAMP/PUC-SP. Marcondes, Danilo. 2019. Brasil e Moçambique: Construindo a Cooperação em Defesa. In Desafios para Moçambique 2019, ed. Sergio Chichava, 377–392. Maputo: IESE. Marcondes, Danilo, Maíra Siman, and Ricardo Oliveira. 2017. South-south cooperation and training for peacekeeping participation. Journal of International Peacekeeping 21 (3–4): 197–223. Ministério da Defesa. 2013. LAAD 2013: Senegal firma acordos com o Brasil para compra de aviões Super Tucano e navios-patrulha. Ministério da Defesa, April 10. https://www.defesa. gov.br/noticias/4275-10-04-2013-defesa-laad-2013-senegal-firma-acordos-com-o-brasil-paracompra-de-avioes-super-tucano-e-navios-patrulha. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. ———. 2014. Brasil enviará missão a Moçambique para auxiliar o país africano a revitalizar suas instalações navais. Ministério da Defesa, March 24. https://www.defesa.gov.br/index.php/ noticias/8397-defesa-brasil-enviara-missao-a-mocambique-para-auxiliar-o-pais-africano-arevitalizar-instalacoes-navais. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Moraes, Rodrigo F. 2012. A Inserção Externa da Indústrias de Defesa Brasileira de Defesa: 1975– 2010. Textos IPEA 1715. Nkala, Oscar. 2014. Equatorial Guinea commissions new frigate. DefenceWeb, June 24. https:// www.defenceweb.co.za/sea/sea-sea/equatorial-guinea-commissions-new-frigate/. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Oliveira, Eliane. 2020. Com venda recorde no exterior, indústria brasileira de defesa terá incentivo federal. O Globo, February 26. https://oglobo.globo.com/economia/com-venda-recordeno-exterior-industria-brasileira-de-defesa-tera-incentivo-federal-24272061. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Ramos, Murilo. 2016. Temer cancela doação de três aeronaves para Moçambique. Época, August 31. https://epoca.globo.com/tempo/expresso/noticia/2016/08/temer-cancela-doacao-de-tresaeronaves-para-mocambique.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Romildo, José. 2019. Chanceler visita África para dinamizar cooperação no Atlântico Sul. Agência Brasil, December 7. http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/internacional/noticia/2019-12/chancelervisita-africa-para-dinamizar-cooperacao-no-atlantico-sul. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Seabra, Pedro. 2014. A harder edge: Reframing Brazil’s power relation with Africa. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 57 (1): 77–97. ———. 2016. Defence cooperation between Brazil and Namibia: Enduring ties across the South Atlantic. South African Journal of International Affairs 23 (1): 89–106. Seabra, Pedro, and Adriana Erthal Abdenur. 2018. Age of choice or diversification? Brazil, Portugal, and capacity-building in the Angolan Armed Forces. African Security 11 (3): 252–273. Sirota, Sara. 2019. First A-29 Super Tucano delivery to Nigeria pushed back to May 2021. Inside Defence, August 19. https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/first-29-super-tucano-deliverynigeria-pushed-back-may-2021. Accessed 20 Jan 2020.

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa Robertṣ I. Rotberg

Lusophonia only goes so far. Given Brazil’s exceedingly early and long connection to Africa, its strong seventeenth- to nineteenth-century commercial relations with West and Central Africa, and the reality that fully half of Brazil’s twenty-first-­ century population derives from Africa (a heftier proportion than in the United States), South America’s largest nation should be expected to play a major role in developing and uplifting today’s Africa. Further, given Brazil’s economic alliance with South Africa through BRICS and its position as a formidable Portuguesespeaking country, Brazil in its national self-interest (and in the post-coronavirus era) should be expected to help propel, if not help to foster, a political and social renaissance in southern Africa. Instead, since the end of the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010), Brazil has abandoned any attempt to use its position as a middle power to guide Africa, to set an example, to exert influence, or – even in the Lusophone arena – to assume the posture of a benevolent elder brother dispensing wisdom and experience. Indeed, since Lula’s era, if not well before, Brazil has focused almost exclusively on exploiting Africa’s oil, coal, and other minerals; on exporting sugar; and on enabling the kleptocratic tendencies of a series of Lusophone autocrats, especially in Angola and now in Mozambique. Moreover, Brazil does too little to depress a thriving narcotics trade between South America and West Africa and thence to Europe. There is much that Brazil could do to help Africa advance and mature along lines demanded and guided by Africa. But there is no political will in Brazil to embark on such endeavors, and revelations about Brazil’s promotion of corruption in Africa under President Lula will make Africans, and some Brazilians, wary.

R. I. Rotberg (*) Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1_10

151

152

R. I. Rotberg

1  Resource Extraction and Industrial Development Brazil’s direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa has always been but a small fraction of its total overseas investment. Its trade with all of Africa only amounted to 3.4% of all overseas trade in 2019, reaching a total of about US$9 billion. Sub-­ Saharan Africa’s share was even smaller. In 2017, exports to that part of the continent totalled only US$4.7 billion. Imports from the same subregion amounted to US$2.2 billion. Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa were the major players. Brazil primarily exported manufactured goods, sugar, and meat. Imports from sub-Saharan Africa to Brazil consisted primarily of petroleum, coal, and iron ore (World Bank 2017–2018). Indeed, as Adriana Schor’s chapter in this book shows, nearly all of Brazil’s imports from Africa consist of oil, with price rises reflected in and accounting for the surges during and just after Lula’s era. Export increase numbers were more real, however, largely sugar sales to Angola and Nigeria and electronics and other manufactured goods to South Africa. Beef sold well, too. But the volumes of both imports and exports peaked when Dilma Rousseff was president and have declined precipitously in the contemporary period. Brazil’s commercial and economic relations with Africa are thus today of little importance either to Brazilian exporters or to the three countries in Africa (Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa) where Brazilian-African trade is concentrated. Schor calls the overall trade integration between Brazil and Africa “extremely shallow.” Despite BRICS, despite the Lusophone concord, and despite its deep historic connections and its steady import of slaves, Brazil has effectively turned its back on Africa – even (or especially) in the commercial sector. Brazil’s biggest industrial enterprises still have significant interests in Africa, especially in the three nations that Schor shows are significant, but those commercial interests are fairly minor in terms of overall Brazilian trade with the world and even with regard to the economies of those countries themselves. Beyond Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa, plus Ghana, Brazilian-African economic and trade relations are nugatory. Petrobras pumps oil in Angola and Nigeria and has searched or is searching for petroleum and natural gas in Benin, Gabon, offshore Mozambique, Namibia, and offshore Tanzania. Petrobras also owns filling stations in Angola. But Petrobras’ main focus nowadays is domestic and is likely to remain so in the coming years. Vale, the big mining company, successfully digs up 4000 tons of low-quality coal an hour near Moatize in central Mozambique. It ships most of what it mines to China and Brazil via an especially reconstructed rail line that transits Malawi to the Mozambican port of Nacala. This is Vale’s largest undertaking outside of Brazil; in Mozambique, Vale is a major employer and investor, but alleged abuses of African labor and the displacing of existing villagers have not endeared Vale – or Brazil, for that matter – to local communities near Moatize. Vale also used similarly questionable tactics to secure a bauxite concession in Guinea and to mine copper and cobalt in Angola and to explore for nickel. Given its major troubles at home, however, for the time being, Vale cannot confidently look expansively to Africa.

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa

153

As Danilo Marcondes’s chapter on health cooperation explains, Vale’s financial support was critical in establishing a pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprise in Maputo, initially to produce antiretroviral medicines to remediate the HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern Africa and later to introduce a range of useful remedies to the African market. At first, however, the facility in Maputo merely packaged basic retrovirals that had been produced in Brazil. Only in 2015 did original production occur in Maputo. More recently, as the Brazilian products were superseded by more modern treatments for HIV/AIDS, the pharmaceutical facility has begun manufacturing a broader range of medicines, including some for TB and malaria. As Marcondes indicates, cooperation between Mozambique and Brazil in this medical area, began in earnest during Lula’s presidency and encouraged by him, constituted an unusually valuable contribution to Africa by Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ  – Fundação Oswaldo Cruz) and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC – Agência Brasileira de Cooperação). The Odebrecht construction company, South America’s largest, is the focus of Alencastro’s chapter. The firm has operated in Africa since the 1980s. It built a big dam near Malanje in Angola and that country’s first shopping mall in Luanda. It also constructed residential condominiums in that city, worked together with Petrobras to install oil and gas facilities, built a dam in Botswana, erected fuel terminals in Djibouti, and serviced oil wells in Gabon. Interestingly, Barnaby Dye’s chapter shows how Odebrecht sought to erect dams in Tanzania to no avail. But, as Alencastro documents, Odebrecht is more significant for the way it (as a major construction and industrial enterprise) helped to corrupt and to operationalize corruption and kleptocracy in Angola under the regime of President José Eduardo do Santos (1979–2017) – all the while seamlessly injecting Brazilian methods of corruption into the Angolan body politic. Alencastro demonstrates, further, that Lula and Odebrecht worked hand-in-hand to profit from Angolan sleaze; he shows that control of Brazilian foreign policy under Lula was leased to Odebrecht, especially in Angola and Equatorial Guinea. As Alencastro’s chapter articulates: Odebrecht could influence Brazilian positions in countries where it held significant interests, such as Argentina or Peru. But the company was only one stakeholder among several. When it came to Angola, Odebrecht dominated the discussion. Nobody could match its knowledge of the ground and its capacity to delineate a clear strategy (Alencastro 2020, “Corporate Presidentialism,” quoting a Brazilian diplomat).

Camargo Corrêa, another Brazilian construction firm, erected social housing in Ghana and Angola and strung power lines in the latter country. It was involved in a hydroelectric project along the Zambezi River downstream from the massive Cahora Bassa Dam in Mozambique. Andrade Gutierrez, another Brazilian builder, helped establish harbors, housing, and sanitation projects in Angola, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Mozambique. Benco Energy agreed to build a 700-megawatt, gas-­ fired, electricity-generating plant in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, but it was never completed. Meanwhile, O Boticário, a cosmetics company, is among the medium-sized enterprises that have established themselves in Angola. Others own supermarkets,

154

R. I. Rotberg

manioc processing facilities, and ceramics factories and grow flowers. Dwarfing them all is Marcopolo, one of the largest bus body fabricators in the world. It has a major factory near Johannesburg. Yet, despite all of this industrial energy emanating from Brazil, today, the nation’s industrial and agroprocessing talents are focused inward and toward improving export marketing in the Americas, Europe, and China. Africa plays (and will continue in the immediate future to play) a distinctly tertiary role in the generation of Brazilian GDP absent unexpectedly and currently unavailable political leadership and action.

2  The Narcotics Trade That said, the trade story has a further dimension. Brazil is involved, as well, in a major clandestine export endeavor. Brazil facilitates the transatlantic smuggling of cocaine and other narcotics from and across its northeastern region to the very weak narco-state of Guinea-Bissau and onward to Europe. An even more major shipment center is found in the port of Santos. That trade persists, less with the connivance of the Brazilian government writ large than with the covert cooperation of some of its regional military, harbor, and aviation authorities. According to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, seizures of Brazilian-supplied cocaine and heroin in West Africa increased tenfold between 2005 and 2009, totalling 260 tons over the period (UNODC 2013). In the current decade, shipments of seized narcotics along the same route increased significantly in Europe and Africa. In 2019, the likely amounts of cocaine coming out of Santos by container (hidden under other goods, of course) and by air from Belem, Recife, and Bahia probably amounted to more than 100 tons. Although this only represents about 15% of South American cocaine destined, via Brazil, for Africa and Europe, such trafficking has added measurably to growing personal drug consumption in Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mali, and Senegal, as well as crime in such countries (Stargardter 2020; LaSusa 2016). Much of the cocaine originates in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. It then transits to Venezuela or Brazil. Marijuana in quantity enters Brazil from Paraguay and exits to West Africa en route to Europe. From northeastern Brazil, most of the trafficking is by air in executive jets, as clandestine cargo in commercial scheduled aircraft, and occasionally by ship. Some of this traffic goes via Angola and Nigeria, but the purely illicit air maneuvers are directed mostly to Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal. Long-established Brazilian gangs are heavily involved. At one point, they controlled thirty-four domestic border crossings, plus Santos. At the African end of these transport routes, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamic State, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah elements are involved. Profits from these extensive trafficking ventures (which Brazil could halt relatively easily) support Islamist terrorist groups, even Boko Haram.

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa

155

In this context, Guinea-Bissau stands out as a small, weakly governed, corruptly led, porous state only 3000 km from Recife. Coastal Guinea-Bissau in part incorporates eighty or so uninhabited, lightly patrolled and monitored offshore islands. Its politicians are easy to traduce. In consequence, ten or more tons of cocaine pass through Guinea-Bissau every year, their value roughly equalling Guinea-Bissau’s entire annual GDP (The Economist 2019). Over the last two decades, much of the electoral campaigning of Guinea-Bissau’s competing military and political elites has been funded by drug cartels from South America. Elsewhere in Africa, Senegalese police discovered large amounts of cocaine stashed in automobiles imported by ship from Brazil. Equally critical caches have been found in port and air arrivals in Cape Verde and Guinea. Behind much of this trafficking is the First Command of the Capital (PCC  – Primeiro Comando da Capital) gang of São Paulo. It may have been the cartel that employed an ingenious method of attaching pods of cocaine secretly to the undersides of transatlantic ships and then hiring divers to retrieve them in Africa or (more often) Europe (The Economist 2019). Brazil, clearly, is a much more significant player in the illicit drugs trade than is usually acknowledged. Arguably, too, Brazil’s (illicit) profits from narcotics smuggling to Africa now contribute more to GDP than almost any other (licit) trade activity with Africa. President Bolsonaro campaigned in 2018 on an “end corruption” platform. But the clandestine trade to Africa continues, just as crime levels remain steady at home in Brazil.

3  Lula’s Initiatives In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Brazil engaged in technical cooperation with a few African countries. It also concerned itself with Africa diplomatically. But it was not until the end of the twentieth century, after sufficient progress socially and economically at home, that Brazil felt itself in a position to look across the ocean to Africa. Lula tried to make Africa much more relevant to Brazil and Brazil greatly relevant to Africa. He sought to make Africa more central to its national foreign policy concerns and wanted Brazil to become a big economic and political player on the African scene. Lula paid state visits to twenty-nine countries on twelve separate occasions. He sanctioned the opening of nineteen of thirty-seven embassies in Africa. (Eighteen African nation-states opened their own embassies in Brasilia during the same period, bringing the total of African missions in Brasilia to thirty-four. That number has now been reduced to thirty-two.). President Lula also inaugurated a series of collaborative scientific projects with Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, São Tomé and Principe, and South Africa. These initiatives were intended to draw heavily on Brazilian expertise, train local scientists, offer university technical and scientific training to undergraduates and graduates from Portuguese-speaking African countries, and send teachers from Brazilian

156

R. I. Rotberg

universities to Africa. His administration promised to work jointly with African health ministries to help combat HIV/AIDS, waterborne diseases, and malaria. President Lula’s foreign minister Celso Amorim was even more active in Africa, making sixty-seven visits during the same years and receiving forty-seven leaders from twenty-seven of sub-Saharan Africa’s forty-nine countries. Together, they revitalized and/or inaugurated the South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone (ZOPACAS  – Zona de Paz e Cooperação do Atlântico Sul), the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP  – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa), the Africa-South America Summit organization, and the India/Brazil/ South Africa (IBSA) Forum. Pedro Seabra’s chapter on Brazil’s role in Africa shows how Brazil replaced Portugal as the main financier of the CPLP and what that meant for strengthened relations with Africa. Lula’s motives were more than altruistic. He sought vigorously to mobilize support behind his quest to obtain a permanent seat for Brazil on the UN Security Council and to bring prestige to himself and to Brazil. He also profited from Odebrecht’s corrupt activities in Angola. Following Lula’s instructions, Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES – Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) began disbursing grants and loans in the US$3 billion range to Africa from 2007 onward. BNDES financed Odebrecht’s projects. Likewise, ABC and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA – Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária) backed initiatives across the continent. The latter even opened an office in Ghana. Starting in 2007, EMBRAPA promoted the growing of soya in selected African savanna environments. In particular, in cooperation with the Japanese aid agency, its so-called ProSAVANA Program tried to replicate Brazilian successes with soybean cultivation. Its biggest arena of activity was the Nacala Corridor region that runs through Mozambique from Malawi. Laura Waisbich’s chapter details in particular how Brazilian civil society opposition grew toward this program. EMBRAPA also – shades of David Livingstone – introduced cotton cultivation in the same area, along the Zambezi River. Notwithstanding potential harmful environmental consequences, it also assisted in the expansion of cotton production, planting several varieties in Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Togo. Simultaneously, with BNDES credit lines, Brazil tried to employ its long-­ standing expertise to encourage the production of biofuels in Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, and Nigeria. Ghana subsequently sold ethanol to Sweden. There was talk of helping Malawi do the same, but as with so many of these schemes, Brazil was unable to propel even a few selected African countries effectively to replace expensive fuel imports with fuels derived from abundant agricultural products and their waste. Likewise, an innovative effort to adapt Brazilian agro-genetic experimentation to help Cameroon use manioc and moringa leaves to feed chickens (for meat and eggs) occurred, but to little lasting effect. Under Lula, Brazil additionally sought to improve security operations in several key African countries. Toward the end of Lula’s administration, and afterward, his defense ministers paid a significant number of visits to Africa. They signed cooperative military agreements with Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa

157

Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, and South Africa and negotiated one with Algeria. The ministers and their successors also arranged to send defense attaches to eight African countries, a process that is examined in detail in the chapter by Pedro Seabra and Danilo Marcondes. Ministerial travels into Africa presaged increasingly important cooperation between the Brazilian navy and its less advanced African counterparts. Port visits were symbolic, but more useful to Africa was the training provided by the Brazilian navy to their African counterparts in Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Namibia, where naval operations were much more rudimentary than in Brazil. Brazil also attempted, as Seabra’s own chapter shows, to intervene diplomatically and effectively to restore stability to Guinea-Bissau in the wake of a coup and the arrival of an Angolan peacekeeping force backed by Portugal but opposed by Nigeria (on behalf of ECOWAS). In this case, West African interests triumphed, and Brazil was largely ignored in the aftermath. One of Lula’s great achievements for Brazilian social betterment was the creation of Bolsa Família, a cash support program for poor citizens. It is recognized globally as an innovative initiative capable successfully of combating the effects of joblessness and social anomie. Lula tried to promote this cash transfer scheme as a useful way of alleviating Africa’s deep wells of poverty. But it never caught on in Africa, possibly because of the prevalence of corruption and bureaucratic capacity problems in many of the Lusophone and Francophone countries targeted by Brazil. Brazilian officials also noted, not least in African Lusophone nations, an evident distrust of social mitigation initiatives that were broad-based. Moreover, introducing a secure safety net along Bolsa Família lines was anathema in countries where the entire concept of a social safety net was novel. Nevertheless, in the post-Lula era, Brazil was persuaded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the British Department for International Development (DFID) to join forces to battle poverty and enhance gender equality in Africa’s low-income countries. UNDP and DFID wanted Brazil’s International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG  – Centro Internacional de Políticas para o Crescimento Inclusivo) and its Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA  – Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada) to design social protection measures for African women, especially in Nigeria, and to find ways to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health outcomes in Mozambique. Cash transfers to strengthen social protections, the Brazilian method, were meant to be central to both of those developmental initiatives.

4  After Lula President Lula’s focus on and approach to Africa fell away after he left office. President Dilma Rousseff, his handpicked successor in 2010, significantly reduced all of Brazil’s foreign engagements, especially those concerning Africa. Even so, despite this conscious pulling back from Africa to focus domestically, she tried

158

R. I. Rotberg

episodically to promote Brazilian business interests during several visits of her own to the continent in 2013. Her approach was more pragmatic than her predecessor’s and a reflection of her personal priorities as well as vanishing national financial resources. She signalled to Brazilian development agencies that they should focus in future more on China and Europe and on the near abroad in what then was Mercosur. Nevertheless, in one particular approach to Africa, she sought to boost Brazilian businesses’ industrial outreach to Africa by offering to cancel or restructure nearly US$1 billion worth of debt owed by a dozen African nations. The primary beneficiaries were intended to be oil- and gas-rich Republic of Congo, copper-dominant Zambia, and Tanzania. Those owing smaller amounts, but also benefitting, were Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, the DRC, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, and Sudan – a mélange of small and large nation-states with which Brazil under Lula once had dealings. The debt cancellations legally made it possible under President Dilma for Brazilian corporations to invest in the petroleum and mineral resource opportunities then available in Africa. But few did. Moreover, civil society in Brazil criticized the actions as giveaways to dictators (Rossi 2013). Moreover, China steadily overcame whatever advantage Brazilian businesses had in winning mineral concessions from African governments. Additionally, President Dilma greatly reduced development expenditures on Africa from US$20 million in 2010 to US$3 million in 2013 (Renzio et al. 2014). Meanwhile, however, trade finance support was being sustained, at the rate of about US$500 million yearly (Rossi 2013). In the military sphere, little by way of training and South-South cooperation was accomplished during Dilma’s presidency and, thereafter, under Presidents Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro. Nevertheless, there were frequent, if often unsuccessful, negotiations between a range of African countries and Brazil for the sale of military aircraft (the Embraer-built Tucano and Super Tucano), the purchase of ships and patrol vessels, and the export of a range of small arms and light weapons. Some important transactions occurred, but as Seabra and Marcondes discuss, there were innumerable disappointments occasioned by bureaucratic delays in Brasilia and in such countries as Nigeria, by UN sanctions in such places as Cote d’Ivoire, and by Brazilian civil society objections to arms transfers that could be used to repress civilians in Tanzania. From a Brazilian military-industrial perspective in 2020, there remain abundant opportunities that were never pursued or fulfilled. It is in peacekeeping more than military armament supplies, however, that Brazil shines. In addition to its long UN peacekeeping leadership in Haiti, Brazil has supplied the top generals of the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) since 2013. Additionally, Brazil’s Army Jungle Warfare Training Center (CITS  – Centro de Instrução e Treinamento de Selva) teaches MONUSCO’s Force Intervention Brigade. Seabra and Marcondes do not say, however, whether it has been MONUSCO’s mandate, or its leadership, that has inhibited an effective response to warlord vigilante depredation in the eastern Congo and whether Brazilian lack of leadership caused MONUSCO’s inability (or refusal) to prevent deadly hostilities there, especially amid the Ebola epidemic.

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa

159

5  Lava Jato and Beyond President Dilma’s impeachment in 2016 coincided with Brazil’s retreat into itself after Judge Sérgio Moro and his prosecutorial allies began disclosing the extent to which Odebrecht, Petrobras, and a raft of prominent politicians had profited massively from corrupt contracting schemes. The Brazilian state, long accustomed to wholesale corruption at the state and national level, was nevertheless astounded from 2014 by tales of fraud and peculation that became the dominant tale of the era, with reverberations in every institution at every level. Moro, later justice minister in the Bolsonaro administration until April 2020, sought to upend the political impunity that had long protected the nation’s political class. He even sentenced Lula, beloved by a multitude of Brazilians, to a long sentence in prison (subsequently sustained by the southern states appeal court and the Supreme Court). Car Wash (Lava Jato), as the string of corruption cases were known, turned both the remaining and compromised political leadership inward. Brazil ceased attempting to play a major role internationally, even within the more and more irrelevant BRICS consortium. Most of all, the post-Car Wash period coincided with several years of severe recession; Brazil suffered economically because of the corruption that Moro and others had exposed and because of the reluctance of foreign and domestic investors to believe strongly in Brazil’s future. Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 compounded Brazil’s misery, soon followed in 2020 by the eruption of a coronavirus that Bolsonaro called a “measly cold.” Bolsonaro battled with the Congress and with his ministers. Finally, the firing of his first health minister (and the rapid resignation of the second) and the resignation of Moro plunged Brazil into crisis. The onset of the devastating coronavirus and Bolsonaro’s declining popularity once more turned the nation inward and firmly away from Africa in mid-2020. Additionally, as Alencastro shows, Odebrecht was central both to corruption in Brazil (in Latin America writ large [Rotberg 2019] and in Angola). Car Wash, and the resignation of dos Santos himself in 2017, undermined Odebrecht completely as President João Lourenço’s successor regime upended the dos Santos family fortunes and ended Odebrecht’s contribution to amassing those riches. Overall, Brazil’s influence in Africa – no matter how nefariously advanced – took a series of deadly turns from which it has hardly recovered.

6  The Future Has Possibilities Brazil in a post-Bolsonaro era could again play a role in Africa befitting a prosperous middle power. That presumes that post-Bolsonaro and post-coronavirus Brazil resumes a path of economic growth based on reformed governance and an uplifted body politic. But like so much in the 2020s globally and in South America, the resumption of political, social, and economic stability and growth depends very

160

R. I. Rotberg

largely on the rise of political leaders of integrity and vision. Only with the re-­ emergence of a responsible leadership cadre dedicated to the public rather than personal interest can Brazil transform its current political malaise into a leadership for good (Rotberg 2012). When that happens, Brazil will again be able to reprise a Lula-like role in Africa but without the corruption that prevailed in Brazil’s dealings with the continent. The opportunities are real and significant, especially within the Lusophone arena. After all, Brazil is modern and wealthy per capita compared to nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa’s polities. That subregion’s need for massive uplift, especially as its population surges from 1.3 billion to 2.7 billion in the next thirty years, is real (Rotberg 2020a, 2020b). Brazil has the capacity to assist sub-Saharan Africa to strengthen a physical and social infrastructure that is now weak, to stimulate agricultural productivity, and to improve its manufacturing capabilities. Brazil also has managerial experience and expertise that could benefit Africa; Brazil has dealt effectively with many of the problems with which one after another African country now contends and will contend for the next several decades. Brazil has a notable comparative advantage with Lusophone countries in Africa. China admittedly has a powerful economic and recent historical edge (e.g., it is improving São Tomé and Principe’s port and airfield), but linguistic affinity will enhance Brazil’s competitive potential if it chooses to spread its skills, competence, and soft power capabilities in that direction. Brazil also needs to sponsor academic attention to Africa in its own universities. There were only two research centers on Africa in Brazil in 2020, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) and at University of São Paulo (USP – Universidade de Sao Paulo). The Lusophone family in Africa, where a rejuvenated Brazil could someday play a vigorous political role and compete with the Chinese economically, consists of two categories of countries. There are four classically corrupt kleptocracies which could be assisted to upgrade governance and return to probity: Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. Then, there are the two democracies: Cape Verde (which could teach Brazil how to run a beneficent state) and São Tomé and Principe, another reasonably well-run small entity. Angola has reformed itself in mighty ways under Lourenço. He is trying to recover the vast wealth that his predecessor and his predecessor’s children stole from the Angolan state. But his pursuit of the dos Santos family hardly means that Angola has abandoned the avarice that punctuated its earlier autocracy and still prevails. At one point, when oil extraction meant colossal wealth, nearly all of it was skimmed by ruling elites (including Lourenço, then a minister). Little dripped down to the mass of people within the nation. Brazil could now assist the Lourenço regime to continue reforming, to reduce kleptocratic takings, and to strengthen good governance. A reformed and resurgent Brazil (after Bolsonaro) could prove a powerful model for the new Angola and for other Lusophone nations. Likewise, Brazil has continuing economic interests in Mozambique, and in a weaker but increasingly corrupt state under President Filipe Nyusi, Brazil might be able to help wean the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO – Frente de

Conclusion: Bursting the Bubble – Brazil’s Failure in Africa

161

Libertação de Moçambique) party and Nyusi and his cronies away from plunder and graft. Brazil’s military and special forces could assist Mozambique in repressing an incipient Islamist insurgency in the Cape Delgado region of the nation’s north. Brazil could play a major role in reforming Mozambique if its own political standing at home were secure. Guinea-Bissau is both a harder and easier case. Harder because it has never experienced sustainable democratic rule or good governance. Harder, too, because Guinea-Bissau is an entrapped narco-state, the recipient of nightly incoming flights filled with illicit narcotics en route north. Beyond drugs, Guinea-Bissau has almost nothing except cashews on which to found an economy or to base improved governance. But, the situation is also easier, because Brazil could, if it wanted to exert itself, take on Guinea-Bissau as a difficult but tractable experiment of reform. Brazil (if reformed) could show Guinea-Bissau how it could remake itself into a better-­ governed nation. Equatorial Guinea joined the CPLP, though Spanish-speaking. Brazil was a major advocate of Equatorial Guinea’s inclusion because of its oil, prospective business opportunities, and the expansion of the Community. Indeed, Brazil brought Equatorial Guinea into the Community based on what turned out to be some spurious promises and despite the furious opposition of Portugal (Seabra’s chapter conveys the details). Despite Brazil’s role in this important recognition and legitimization of Equatorial Guinea’s kleptocracy, the Obiang family dynasty has hardly repaid Brazil’s embrace with meaningful reforms, any diminution of its oppression of the mass of its inhabitants, or any reduction of corrupt dealings. Equatorial Guinea is hardly susceptible to outside remaking. And since Brazil confiscated Vice President Teodoro Obiang’s US$15 million watch collection and US$1.5 million in cash when he flew to Rio de Janeiro in 2018, there is hardly any concord between Brazil and its sometime national protégé (Rotberg 2020b). Cape Verde is one of the best governed of the nations of the African Union. It has ranked among the top-five best-run African states since the creation of the Index of African Governance in 2007 (Rotberg 2020a). In the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, it also ranks highly as the forty-first least corrupt country in the world and third in rank in Africa after the Seychelles and Botswana. São Tomé and Principe is not so highly regarded, but it is democratic, bankrolled recently by China, and a steady performer on all indexes and scales. In 2019, the Corruption Perceptions Index ranked it sixty-fourth, ahead of Senegal, Argentina, Hungary, and South Africa. Once Brazil takes its place in the UN and across world order as a robust middle power concerned to assist Africa and especially Lusophone countries and has buried its governance skeletons at home, Brazil should be able to provide valuable assistance and guidance to those Lusophone and other countries that need it badly. Africa will benefit for at least several more decades from the kinds of guidance only a confident middle power that has itself dealt with issues of transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from awkward to responsible leadership. A country such as Brazil that copes with urban sprawl and crime, that has provided robust educational opportunities and improved its public health capabilities, and that has faced down corruption, will have much to offer to a variety of sub-Saharan African

162

R. I. Rotberg

polities as they attempt to recover and grow after battling and surviving the coronavirus pandemic. Brazil, in many resilient ways, has much to offer to Africa that will be valuable as the countries of the subcontinent try to eke out a demographic dividend from its population explosion and as so many of its constituent parts shift from being rural to being overwhelmingly urban. Brazil underwent a similar transformation many decades ago. To play this important role in Africa, however, Brazil will need to strengthen its own governance and provide leadership of unquestioned integrity and legitimacy. That is a major task for Brazil and, when it is accomplished, potentially of benefit for Africa. Brazil’s main challenge is to project itself confidently into Africa. If it succeeds, it will be better for Brazil’s sense of itself and for its reputation as a resurgent middle power and potentially better for the Africa with which Brazil is historically and culturally deeply connected.

References Alencastro, Mathias. 2020. Corporate presidentialism, or how Odebrecht brought Lula to Angola. This volume. LaSusa, Mike. 2016. Brazil is top cocaine transshipment country for Europe, Africa, Asia. InSight Crime, June 24. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/brazil-is-top-cocaine-transshipmentcountry-for-europe-africa-asia/. Accessed 20 May 2020. Renzio, Paolo de, Jurek Seifert, Geovana Zocal Gomes, and Manaíra Assunção. 2014. Solidarity among brothers? Brazil in Africa: trade, Investment and Cooperation. BRICS Policy Center Policy Brief 10. Rotberg, Robert I. 2012. Transformative political leadership. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ———., ed. 2019. Corruption in Latin America. Cham: Springer. ———. 2020a. Things come together: Africans achieving greatness in the twenty-first century. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020b. Anticorruption. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Rossi, Amanda. 2013. Governo Dilma Implementa Agenda África para Ampliar Relações. Estado de S.  Paulo, October 29. https://brasil.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,governo-dilma-implementa-agenda-africa-para-ampliar-relacoes,1090701. Accessed 20 May 2020. Stargardter, Gabriel. 2020. Brazil’s Gangs Emerge as Major Cocaine Exporters, Flooding Europe with White Powder. Reuters, March 12. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-violencecocaine-specialreport/brazils-gangs-emerge-as-major-cocaine-exporters-flooding-europewith-white-powder-idUSKBN20Z1DP. Accessed 20 May 2020. The Economist. 2019. The global drugs trade shifts to West Africa. The Economist, November 21. https://www.economist.com/international/2019/11/21/the-global-drugs-trade-shifts-to-westafrica. Accessed 20 May 2020. UN Office of Crime and Drugs. 2013. Transnational organized crime in West Africa: A threat assessment. UNODC. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/West_ Africa_TOCTA_2013_EN.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2020. World Bank. World Integrated Trade Statistics (WITS), 2017–2018. https://wits.worldbank.org/. Accessed 20 May 2020.

Index

A Abolitionist pressure, 15 Africa Brazil’s direct investment, 152 Brazilian SSC, 119, 125, 127 Cape Verde, 161 commercial and economic relations, 152 corruption scandals, 3 economic exchanges, 3 economic interests in Mozambique, 160 Equatorial Guinea, 161 human rights campaigns, 125 illicit drugs trade, 155 industrial enterprises, 152 infrastructure building, 124 Lusophone family, 160 national knowledge brokers, 119 Odebrecht construction company, 153 PAA Africa programme, 122 people-to-people connections, 116 project/programme design, 121 promotion of corruption, 151 public-private investments, 127 security needs, 133 slave trade, 4 South-South exchanges, 116 sub-Saharan Africa, 152 African National Congress (ANC), 60 African Union (AU) summit, 1 Agrarian social movements, 121 Agricultural development, 113, 114, 124, 127 Agricultural Smallholders Movement (MPA), 121

Angola bilateral relations, 69 BNDES, 66 Brazil’s activities, 65 civil society, 68 decolonization, 68 democratic credentials, regime, 68 exclusive responsibility, 66 foreign policy, 65 moral and political obligation, 65 MPLA, 67 multifaceted character, 68 philanthropic agency, 65 political cycle, 67 political dimension, 66 public contracts, 66 Antiretrovirals (ARVs) AZT (zidovudine), 96 factory in Mozambique, 96 Brazilian initiatives to HIV/ AIDS, 100–101 negotiations associated with factory, 102–107 pharmaceutical production, 95 production, 97–99 transfer of technology, 99 Atlantic Africa, 12 Atlantic systems African resistance, 13 catholic symbols, 14 configurations, 14 economic crisis, 14 environmental factors, 14

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. Alencastro, P. Seabra (eds.), Brazil-Africa Relations in the 21st Century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55720-1

163

164 Atlantic systems (cont.) Iberian claims of authority, 12 indigenous workers, 14 key participation, 13 social nature, 14 B Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES), 56 Bilateral relations, 5 BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank), 76, 84, 90 Brazil Bolsonaro’s election, 159 Car Wash, 159 civil society, 114 commodity boom, 75 competitive potential, 160 cross-governmental effort, 2 defence industry and Africa (see Defence industry) diplomatic priority, 1 emerging/rising powers, 73 foreign engagements, 157 foreign policy, 4 historical-cultural links, 1 in international development, 119 local military mentality, 136 Lula’s initiatives, 155–157 multilateral frameworks, 136 narcotics trade, 151, 154, 155 political connections, 2 projects in Tanzania (see Tanzania) racial democracy role model, 2 resource extraction and industrial development, 152–154 social participation, 128 state-society interfaces, 127 strategic partnerships, 1 under President Dilma, 158 Workers Party, 1 Brazil vs. Portugal in Africa Brazilian policymakers, 29 CPLP, 30 embassies, 30 Luso-Brazilian community, 29 NATO, 30, 31 Portugal’s postcolonial role, 29 Portuguese policy, 30 socio-economic consequences, 29 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) BRICS Working Group, 123

Index civil society mobilisation, 121 social mobilisation, 122 street protests, 113 Brazil’s Development Cooperation Agency (ABC), 76 Brazil-Africa relations agricultural products, 17 agricultural/mineral commodities, 18 beneficial relationships, 20 bilateral commerce, 18 business interests, 5 citizen engagement, 116 civil society engagement, 114–116 commercial treaty, 17 cosmopolitanism, 18 cultural manifestations, 19 decolonization, 20 economic and political interests, 21 economic networks, 17 flow of returnees, 18 foreign policy, 5 forging cooperation and partnerships, 5 global influence, 21 history/traditions, 5 identification, 19 international context, 20 metropolitan counterparts, 9 military dictatorship, 20 multiple connections, 9 Negritude movement, 20 policy-making, 4 positive evaluation, 19 post-abolition period, 19 presidential and corporate agency, 76–78 presidential diplomacy, 4 racial democracy, 19 self-identification, 21 systematic belittlement, 16 traditional policy, 20 transatlantic slave trade, 9 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMPRAPA), 76 Brazilian Black Movement, 125, 126 Brazilian foreign policy (BFP) civil society activism, 114 democratisation, 114, 115 national policy/institutional builders, 119 politics, 115 Brazilian global footprints, 116, 124, 128 Brazilian Health Cooperation, see Cooperation in health sector Brazilian Health System, 109 Brazilian military logistical system, 144

Index Brazilian model, 109 Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), 123 Brazilian pharmaceutical policies, 97 Brazilian trade, SSA annual growth rate, 44, 45 commodity prices, 45 drive productivity, 48 fuel import, 46 GDP, 43 import reduction, 45, 46 insights/evidence, 44 interest/opportunities, 53 international trade, 43 optical illusion, 46 product diversification, 53 BRICS summit, 1 C Central African Republic (CAR), 25 Citizen’s constitution, 96 Civil society activism, 7 Civil society mobilisation, 121 Civil society organisations (CSOs), 113, 117, 120, 121, 123, 128, 129, 145 Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), 136 economic/commercial opportunities, 36 ECOWAS, 32, 33 Equatorial Guinea, 34–36 evolution, 30 goal, 34 good governance, 35 Guinea-Bissau, 26, 36 human rights, 35 national scale, 35 NATO, 31 variable geometries, 36 Contraband slave trade bilateral treaties, 15 commercial relations, 16 Conservative Party, 15 federal efforts, 16 financing troops/furnishing ships, 16 international politics, 14 networks, 16 perception of trade, 15 Cooperation in health sector compulsory licensing, 96 drugs, human right, 97 Mozambican health officials, 102 Mozambican National Health Service, 107

165 national health system, 101 Protocol of Intentions on Scientific and Technological Cooperation, 101, 105 recognition, 96 south-South technical cooperation, 95 Cotton Victoria project, 80 Culturalist interpretations, 2 D Dams Capanda Dam in Angola, 77 feasibility assessment, 82 hydropower, 86 infrastructure, 85 Lauca Dam in Angola, 83 Mnyera Dam, 83 Stiegler’s Gorge Dam, 82, 88 Defence cooperation, 7 Defence industry Africa aircraft purchase, 142 airplane deal, 142 Algerian authorities, 143 Brazil’s control, 146 cutting edge technology, 140 donation process, 145 Ghanaian Air Force base, 141, 142 intellectual property rights, 140 internationalization, 145 Mauritania’s Air Force, 141 multipurpose role, 141 overseas sale, Brazilian Navy, 143 political and economic crisis, 145 professional qualification program, 144 sale of defence products, 142 security needs, 142 South Atlantic space, 143 Tucano airplanes, 145 cooperation initiatives, 135 defence cooperation agreement, 139, 140 in 1980s, 140 intergovernmental interactions, 134 Ministry of Defence, 134 Defence White Book (2012), 134 Democratic credentials, 6 Democratisation, 114, 115 Depth, trade integration, 48–50 Development cooperation projects, Tanzania, 80, 91 Diplomatic missions, 3

Index

166 E Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 32–34, 36, 37 Economic crisis, 69 Economic diplomacy Angolan government, 57 bilateral relations, 58 BNDES, 56, 64 Brazilian corporations, 56 business agenda, 57 coherent business agenda, 61 corporate governance, 58 corruption mechanisms, 57 corruption scandals, 59 dominant tradition, 58 dynamic economies, 60 Federal Prosecution Service, 64 financing package, 63 foreign policy, 56 governance reforms, 62 international business, 61 military dictatorship, 58 modernization, 58 MPLA, 61 multinational corporations, 59 national champions, 63 overseas investments, 62 personal leadership, 56 personal relationship, 62 political/economic transition, 58 productive partnership, 62 Reciprocal Credit Agreement, 63 shared destiny, 60 trustworthy businessman, 59 Economic trade, 6 Equatorial Guinea, 35, 38 EU Training Mission (EUTM-CAR), 25 Exported corruption, 56

prevention initiatives, HIV/AIDS, 108 social participation, 117 under Lula, 153 Foreign policy analysis (FPA), 114, 115 Foreign policy orientation, 1

F Foreign policy, 26, 27, 36, 38, 56 activism, 120 AIDS treatment, 110 anti-corruption operation, 138 BFP, 114 Brazilian CSOs, 120 corporate social responsibility policy, 105 FPA, 114, 115 pharmaceutical, 108 politics of BFP, 115 post-Lula era, 157

M Memorandum of understanding (MoU), 137, 144 Military cooperation and defence cooperation, 135 Republic of Congo, 139 technical cooperation agreement, 135 Ministry of Defence, 134 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 134 Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 57 Mozambican Medicines Society (SMM), 95, 96, 102, 103, 105–108

G Geographic inequality, 74 Global Brazil, 117, 128 Global middle power, 7 Green revolution, 2 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 43 Guinea-Bissau Brazilian mission, 33 CPLP, 33 ECOWAS, 33, 34 local authorities, 32 Portugal, 32 SSR, 32, 33 UNPCB, 33 H Harmonized System (HS), 49 High-politics domain, 25 I Infrastructure building, 114, 124, 127 Intense speculation, 55 Itamaraty (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 77, 81, 82 L Landless Workers’ Movement, 121 Lula-Odebrecht relationship, 57

Index Mozambican Ministry of Health (MISAU), 104 Mozambique and Brazil, pharmaceutical production, 108 ARV factory, 96 (see also Antiretrovirals (ARVs)) Brazil’s partnership, 95 economic impact, HIV/AIDS, 106 implementation, pharmaceutical factory, 98 medications, 103 pharmaceutical production, 107 sanitary undertaking, 100 SMM, 106 N Naivety, 74, 78, 79 Narcotics trade, 154, 155 National champions, 2 National Defence Policy (2005), 134 National Defence Strategy (2008), 134 Negritude movement, 20 No to ProSAVANA’ campaign, 113, 122, 127 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 30, 137 O Opportunity-taking behaviour, 28 Organization of American States (OAS), 61 P People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 77 Political-economic cycles, 6 Politics of development cooperation, 6 Politics trade, 51, 52 Portugal’s democratization, 29 Portuguese cooperation, 137 Portuguese policy, 30 Portuguese slave-trading monopoly catholic claims/treaties, 12 commerce/warfare, 11 commercial system, 10 concept of monarchy, 11 crusading enterprise, 12 economic system, 10 indigenous population, 10 international affair, 10 Kongolese monarchy, 11

167 moral conflict, 10 natural endowments, 11 pre-emptive expansionism, 11 rise of sugar production, 11 trading networks, 11 transatlantic slave trade, 10 Post-war reconstruction, 2 ProSAVANA Program, 124, 156 R Reframing Brazil in Lusophone Africa Brazilian embassies, 27 CPLP, 26 ECOWAS, 37 Equatorial Guinea, 38 foreign policy, 26, 27, 36, 38 geographic selection, 25 high-politics domain, 25 national capabilities, 28 opportunity-taking behaviour, 28 Portugal, 25, 26 reliability, 37 sustainability, 28 Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA), 82, 83, 85, 86, 89 S Security Sector Reform (SSR), 32 Social engagement, 114 Social mobilisation, 122 Social movements, 114, 117, 118, 121, 125, 127, 128, 130 Social participation, 114, 117, 123, 128 Socialist planned economy, 64 Sociedade Mineira de Catoca (SMC), 57 South-South cooperation (SSC), 2 citizen participation, 123 civil society engagement, 118 democratisation of BFP, 114, 115 disagreement, 128 domestic factors, 115 evaluation and assessments, 119 in HIV/AIDS, 96–99 modes of civil society engagement, 120 participation and mobilisation, 115 technical cooperation, 95 South-South exchanges, 116 Spaces for participation, 114, 115 State-society interfaces, 115, 127 Sub-Saharan African (SSA), 43

Index

168 T Tanzania Brazil-Tanzania Technical Cooperation Deal, 79 Brazil-Tanzanian outcomes, 90 construction, 88 ‘cooperation’ projects, 81 Cotton Victoria project, 80 dams, 84 development cooperation projects, 80, 91 Egyptian consortium, 89 embassy openings, 79 global economic climate, 84 history, 79 HIV/AIDS prevention project, 80 hydropower projects, 85 infrastructure projects, 81 naivety, 88 politics, 89 power project construction, 87 power purchase agreement with Tanesco, 87 private sector projects Odebrecht role, 81–83 Queiroz Galvão, 83–84

public-private infrastructure deals, 86 WTO meetings, 79 Trade aspects, 43 Brazil and SSA (see Brazilian trade, SSA) diversification, 51 promotion, 51 social ties, 43 Tripartite cooperation program, 2 U United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM), 61 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), 5 UN Peacebuilding Commission (UNPCB), 33 W Workers’ Party, 161 Z Zone of Peace and Cooperation in the South Atlantic (ZOPACAS), 136