Introduction

During President Lula's government, Brazilian diplomacy gave a privileged place to Africa, and relations intensified. A strategic vision and a coherent perspective were the new basis of the Brazil–Africa relations, which became the principal focus of the so-called South–South cooperation. While many believe the relations with Africa proved the solidarity dimension of President Lula's social programme, others consider them as no more than prestige diplomacy, a ‘waste of time and money’. Moreover, some regard these relations primarily as business diplomacy, a kind of ‘soft imperialism’, which was only to be different from China's presence in Africa in its form and intensity.

Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, exercised a diplomacy considered ‘continuity without priority’, especially in the case of Africa. Nevertheless, relations between the two sides of the South Atlantic Ocean followed their course. But after Rousseff's impeachment in 2016, the Michel Temer government followed a diplomatic path without a clear African policy strategy. Although Africa is no longer at the top of Brazil's international agenda, the connections already established are working at many levels.

Historical background

Following the end of the Cold War and the creation of Mercosur in 1991, Africa was considered a secondary arena within a diplomacy based on a neoliberal view of globalisation and favouring Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Fernando Collor de Mello (March 1990 to September 1992) was the first president to be elected by direct vote since Jânio Quadros, back in 1961. After he took office in 1990, his neoliberal economic policies opened a new phase of relative distancing from Africa. The Washington Consensus, whereby vertical North–South relations were given priority over horizontal South–South relations, started to govern the strategic vision of the Brazilian elite. The decline of trade between Africa and Brazil that followed was the result of the adjustment plans on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the withdrawal of state financing of exports and many other branches of the economy, and the need to buy oil from Argentina to balance trade relations within the Mercosur, the South American common market. Nevertheless, President Collor visited the region in 1991 after Nelson Mandela's release from prison and the independence of Namibia, which received Brazilian help to structure its navy.