Brazilian foreign policy to Africa under Rousseff

Dilma Rousseff, the first female president of Brazil, took over from Lula in January 2011. Although coming from the same political party and sharing a similar perspective regarding the promotion of Brazil´s development, Rousseff has kept a lower profile and travelled less than her predecessor.

The current president has made her first state visit to the African continent to attend the IBSA Summit in South Africa on October 2011. The trip also included visits to Angola and Mozambique, two of Brazil´s most traditional African allies and important markets for Brazilian companies, both state and private.

Africa has been included in Brazil’s new commercial promotion strategy under the current president. The Brazilian government is looking to strengthen the commercial promotion capacity of its diplomatic representations. In Africa, there are 12 diplomatic posts that were selected, based on economic growth projection and expected demand for Brazilian goods, and that will receive additional diplomatic staff: Khartoum, Tripoli, Rabat, Cape Town, Dakar, Lusaka, Kinshasa, Brazzaville, Lagos, Tunis, Addis Ababa and Dar es Salam¹²¹.

As part of a strategy to increase commercial relations with the African continent, the BNDES has inaugurated a new line of credit for Brazilian companies that wish to have a presence in the African continent. The bank will focus in companies that wish to operate in the areas of energy, medicine, banking services, biofuels and agriculture. These areas will complement the three main sectors in which Brazilian companies are already heavily involved in Africa: oil and gas, infra-structure and mining. The bank also wishes to increase the export of high-value industrial equipment, such as electrical and agriculture machinery¹²².

However, Brazil’s relations with Africa during the Rousseff administration were not reduced to commercial considerations. Because it was occupying a non-permanent seat at the Security Council¹²³, Brazil was called to take a position regarding African security problems. On the political crisis in the Ivory Coast, the Brazilian government supported a negotiated solution to the situation in the country and expressed concern over the possibility of a military intervention in the country

Brazil expressed a similar position to other emerging powers such as India and South Africa, also serving non-permanent seats in the SC. Brazil was concerned about the use in Council resolutions of the “all means necessary” expression, which implies authorization of the use military force, such as what was used in UNSC resolution 1975 on the situation in the Ivory Coast. Brazil, together with India and South Africa, stressed that the African Union should play a leading role in helping all parties achieve a solution to the political crisis in the country. Although Brazil recognized the importance of protecting civilians under threat in the country, it expressed caution about the possibility of expanding the mandate to include other functions, particularly military intervention, that could bring more harm than good to the situation.¹²⁴

In 2013, President Rousseff is scheduled to visit Africa on two occasions, in late February to attend the Africa-South America Summit in Equatorial Guinea and in late March, to attend the BRICS Summit in South Africa.