Brazil's Turn towards Africa

Like China's cooperation with Africa, Brazil's presence in the continent is hardly new, dating back to the Cold War. In the early 1960s, as part of President Jânio Quadros's “Independent Foreign Policy,” and later in the mid-1970s, under the military regime, the Brazilian government drew upon historical ties between Brazil and Africa—notably, the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade—to deepen ties to African partner states.Footnote ³ In both instances, this was part of a broader strategy for enhancing Brazilian influence abroad, as well as a search for new economic opportunities. By the late 1970s, around the same time that a handful of major Brazil-based transnational corporations began investing in African oil and infrastructure, the Brazilian government also began providing some technical cooperation to newly independent states in Africa.

After the turn of the millennium, when Brazil and many African countries began experiencing relatively high economic growth rates, Brazilian companies began to expand their investments in Africa, and the country's technical cooperation portfolio expanded quickly. There were political drivers behind this surge in Brazil-Africa relations: under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10), elected through the Workers Party, the Brazilian government actively encouraged a “turn towards Africa” through a series of diplomatic measures. In addition to a highly visible presidential diplomacy by Lula, who made more official visits to African states than any of his predecessors, Brazil's network of embassies and diplomatic representations in Africa expanded rapidly. At a current total of thirty-seven, Brazil has more missions on the continent than the United Kingdom. In addition to seeking new economic opportunities, the government sought to deepen its international development cooperation as a way of forging a more autonomous foreign policy, especially in relation to the United States and Western Europe. At the same time, Brazilian official discourse built upon the Cold War-era efforts to forge an overlapping identity by underscoring shared cultural elements and historical ties, for instance through the claim that Brazil has the second-largest population of African descent, after Nigeria.Footnote ⁴

In fostering this surge, the Brazilian government drew inspiration from China's experiences in Africa. China had shown that, by treating Africa as a space of opportunity rather than a hopeless continent, it was possible to expand markets, tap into new resources, and generate profits. Yet there was also a political aspect to Brazil's learning process, which had to do with Brazil's longtime bid for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In the 1960s, China provided development cooperation to liberation movements and newly independent states as a way to expand bilateral recognition of the People's Republic and to broaden its support base within multilateral settings. Although Beijing's eventual replacement of Taipei within the United Nations, including the UNSC, in 1971 was also a result of great power politics, Africa proved an important source of votes within the UN General Assembly (UNGA). More than forty years later, the lesson was not lost on Brazilian decision makers that Africa would be a good place to secure support for its own rising power aspirations. By the time that Lula assumed the presidency and made obtaining the bid for a permanent seat at the UNSC the centerpiece of his foreign policy, Africa encompassed no less than fifty independent states, each with a vote in the UNGA. Cultivating relations with a broad range of African states thus became strategically important to Brazil in the past decade.

The resulting surge in Brazil-Africa ties has entailed not only the diversification of stakeholders involved in these transatlantic relations (state and nonstate actors alike), but also a geographical broadening of Brazil's presence in the continent. Historically, Brazilian diplomacy focused heavily on Africa's Lusophone countries; relations with Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe are cemented with major investments by Brazilian companies (especially in Angola and Mozambique), by the provision of technical cooperation, and by the dissemination of Brazilian cultural products such as music, telenovelas (soap operas), and consumer goods that appeal to growing African middle classes. At the same time, however, Brazil's presence has also expanded in non-Lusophone African countries, from Sub-Saharan to Northern Africa.

This intensification has been accompanied by a discourse of solidarity, horizontality, demand-driven cooperation, and respect for national sovereignty—elements that often closely parallel the language of Chinese cooperation. Brazil's ties, however, are also conducted with an element of “Brazilian exceptionalism”: Brazilian stakeholders frequently cite the deep historical links, especially those produced by the Atlantic slave trade and its lasting impact on Brazilian culture,Footnote ⁵ as providing a unique underpinning to its relations with Africa. Brazilian leaders often boast that the country has the largest population of African descent of any state outside Africa; Lula frequently resorted to a narrative of kinship when referring to Brazil's “fraternal relations” with Africans.

These economic, political, and strategic motivations led to a steep growth of trade (from around US$5 billion in 2002 to US$26.5 billion in 2012—an increase of 426 percent),Footnote ⁶ as well as intensifying investment, political, and defense ties between Brazil and Africa. Nonetheless, these exchanges are frequently overshadowed by China's role in the continent in almost every respect and in practically every African country. China's multilayered cooperation—channeled bilaterally and via the Forum for China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), financed by a multitude of credit lines, and facilitated by a fast-growing Chinese diaspora in Africa—has outpaced Brazil's presence on the continent both in scope and in geographic reach. The sharp asymmetries in Brazil's and China's presences in Africa increasingly manifest themselves through direct competition.

China-Africa Cooperation as Competition

China's cooperation in Africa is often viewed by Brazilian actors as posing challenges to Brazil's ability to consolidate its ties to African states in a variety of arenas. First, almost by any measure, the sheer scale of Chinese cooperation with Africa dwarfs that of Brazil. Total Brazil-Africa trade reached a peak in 2011, with US$27.66 billion in exchanges; that same year, China-Africa commercial flows totaled US$166 billion.Footnote ⁷ With respect to economic relations, Brazilian exports to Africa, which are predominantly made up of manufactured and semi-manufactured products, face steep competition from China, especially among Brazil's top commercial partners. In 2008, for instance, Angola became China's largest trading partner in Africa, with bilateral trade reaching US$24 billion in 2010. (Angola was also China's largest oil supplier in 2001.) In 2010, China also became Mozambique's third-largest trading partner. As African states import more from China, some Brazilian exports have been dislocated.

This displacement effect is observed, for instance, in the activities of Cape Verde's rabidantes—women who buy products abroad to sell in the country's stores and markets. From the late 1990s to the 2000s, the rabidantes regularly flew from Praia to Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil, where they purchased as many clothes, sandals, and beachwear as they could fit into their luggage. More recently, however, cheaper Chinese products—some of them peddled by the rapidly growing Chinese diaspora in Cape Verde—have flooded the country's retail and market stalls. Starting around 2008, the consumer goods trade between Brazil and Cape Verde carried out by the rabidantes shrank considerably.Footnote ⁸

Growing competition from China is also evident in the area of investments. In the mid-2000s, the Brazilian mining giant Vale won a coal-mine concession in Moatize, Mozambique. The initial investment facilitated the entrance into the country of many Brazilian medium and small-sized firms but also helped to pave the way for the entrance of other major Brazilian construction companies. Yet in Mozambique, as elsewhere in Africa, China's infrastructure provision has also intensified in the same countries and sectors in which Brazil operates. Chinese and Brazilian companies have begun to vie directly for the same projects, particularly since they have both specialized in large-scale infrastructure. In 2009, when Brazilian economic cooperation with Africa experienced a drop after several years of accelerated growth, the Foreign Trade Secretary at Brazil's Ministry of Development openly blamed China, noting that Brazilian firms were being outbid in infrastructure tenders.Footnote ⁹

Indeed, Chinese companies implementing cooperation projects in Africa have access to cheaper capital than do their Brazilian counterparts. Although BNDES issues specific credit lines for financing Brazilian exports of goods and services, it does not provide grants or concessional loans and restricts its export financing to a handful of large companies (the so-called “national champions” in which the Brazilian government has long opted to invest strategically). China, on the other hand, has a veritable profusion of financing institutions—a mix of state and nonstate agencies, programs, and banks—that fund projects with a wide variety of instruments, whether the investments are closely aligned with Chinese foreign policy priorities or driven more narrowly by specific company interests.

Chinese diplomacy and other state institutions have proactively facilitated this expansion by creating new channels for cooperation with African partners. With a total of forty-six embassies in Africa, China has nine more representations on the continent than Brazil. There is also a plethora of well-funded avenues for cooperating with China. For instance, although African Lusophone countries fall under the umbrella of FOCAC, in 2003, China launched the Macau Forum for Economic and Commercial Cooperation China-Lusophone Countries.Footnote ¹⁰ Over the past half-decade, the initiative gained traction, with a new US$1 billion fund dedicated to supporting investment projects in these countries.Footnote ¹¹ Although the Forum is nominally geared toward all members of the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries, including Brazil itself, in practice the funds are channeled to Lusophone Africa and Timor-Leste. To help legitimate this move—in a strategy that is reminiscent of the Brazilian practice of stressing shared experiences with African partners—the Chinese government emphasizes China's cultural ties to Lusophone Africa by noting that Macau, from which the new fund is administered, is a fellow former colony of Portugal.

In some areas of growing overlap, one element in particular concerns Brazilian stakeholders: the timing of investments, particularly in post-conflict states and economies undergoing a degree of liberalization after prolonged periods with little exposure to the forces of globalization. Brazilian firms have learned that early entrance into these markets can help them to set a foot in the door first, with long-term benefits. The establishment of institutional links, political ties, personal relationships, and even technical specifications (from railroad gauges to hydroelectric dam models) can generate a path dependency that raises the costs—both economic and political—of African actors switching partners down the road. This helps to explain why Odebrecht chose to remain in Angola during the country's civil war—a strategy that not only allowed it to retain market majority once the conflict ended, but also helped the company to project a positive image to a broad swath of the Angolan population. Yet the speed and agility of Chinese cooperation, which typically does not jump through as many bureaucratic hoops, are cited as factors that imperil Brazil's ability to be the first to set foot in the door.

In addition, recent developments in Brazil have cast into doubt the ability of major Brazilian firms to maintain their recent rate of investment in Africa. Economic slowdown in Brazil, partly driven by a steep drop in commodity prices, has generated new financial constraints. Given these emerging constraints, some Brazilian companies operating in Africa may scale down their Africa presence.

As the example from Boane shows, competition from China extends to the provision of technical cooperation in Africa. Brazilian technical cooperation has traditionally focused geographically on Lusophone countries, and thematically on social policy areas in which Brazil's domestic experiences are viewed as relatively successful (or, in which the Brazilian government wants to project itself as a source of policy innovation): tropical agriculture, public health, and education. While China has offered some technical assistance to African partners for an even longer period than Brazil, more recently it has expanded its role in the same niches in which Brazil has built up expertise, including agriculture and public health.

Likewise, Brazil increasingly vies with China for opportunities in defense cooperation with Africa. Brazil has expanded its provision of equipment, arms, and training to African states, especially Lusophone countries and states along the South Atlantic, a region that has become more important to Brazilian national defense policy since the Lula government. The case of Namibia illustrates these changing dynamics. Since 1994, Brazil has helped to build up the Namibian Navy by offering officer and cadet training (carried out in Brazil and in Namibia, both in Portuguese) and providing defense equipment, including vessels. In 2011, China and Namibia began boosting their military cooperation, and China has since started providing vessels for the Namibian Navy. In 2012, China delivered to Walvis Bay the newly built warship the Elephant, meant to serve as a logistical support vessel. The ship is also intended for cadet training, allowing for more in loco capacity-building; as the Namib Times noted, “In the past, Namibian sailors had to go to the Naval Academy of Brazil to obtain these skills.”Footnote ¹² In May 2014, a Chinese fleet consisting of two missile frigates and a supply ship docked in Namibia for three days during an eight-country tour of Africa. The Chinese embassy in Windhoek, referencing the two countries' “shared history of fighting for national independence,” used the opportunity to announce “a new era” for defense cooperation between China and Namibia.Footnote ¹³ Brazilian defense circles expressed concern at this intensifying cooperation, making overt comparisons to Brazil's efforts in Namibia. In one Brazilian media piece, the Elephant was described as “ten times bigger than the Grajaú class vessel provided in January 2009 by the [Brazilian] shipyard INACE.”Footnote ¹⁴

As the anecdote suggests, competition also extends to the sales of military equipment, including arms. Africa is perceived as the fastest-growing market for many types of weapons; between 2004 and 2008, and 2009 and 2013, arms imports to African states grew by 53 percent, more than any other region.Footnote ¹⁵ Both Brazil and China have become major exporters of small arms, in addition to heavier equipment such as vessels, airplanes, and surveillance systems. On both sides, these sales are backed by proactive state policies: the Brazilian and Chinese governments have placed the development of their national defense industries among the top priorities of their respective national defense strategies. Since Africa is widely considered to be a prime market for defense exports, both countries have been intensifying their sales, with government agencies frequently working to facilitate new deals for state-owned or private-sector firms. To take advantage of new government incentives meant to boost Brazil's defense industry, several Brazilian corporations that have historically focused on infrastructure, including Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, have developed defense branches and actively participate in new tenders meant to boost Brazil's military power and capacity to produce armaments.Footnote ¹⁶ Since exports to Africa are considered to be vital to this modernization drive, China's considerable production capacity and highly competitive prices make it more difficult for Brazilian firms to break into new African markets or expand their sales to certain partner states.

Finally, on the political front, China has amassed considerable influence among African states, which overwhelmingly recognize Beijing rather than Taipei. (Only three African countries still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan: Swaziland, São Tomé and Principe, and Burkina Faso; Malawi and the Gambia have both recently switched allegiances and now recognize Beijing.) China's copious provision of development cooperation, trade, and investment allow it build substantial goodwill among African states, even if China's presence sometimes generates tensions. On multilateral affairs, the fact that China has veto power at the UNSC gives Beijing an edge because its pull within the UN can be used in favor of African countries. In July and November 2004, during the Darfur crisis, China threatened to use its veto to prevent the UNSC from adopting political sanctions and an oil embargo against Sudan. Although Brazil is highly proactive within the UN and other established multilateral forums, it lacks the political weight of a permanent seat holder. Moreover, African states have supported the idea of reforming the UNSC—in fact, some also aspire to permanent seats—and obtaining Beijing's support has become more important for these governments. Although some African governments have openly expressed support for Brazil's bid for a permanent seat, most African states support a model of reform, summarized in the 2005 Ezulwini Consensus,Footnote ¹⁷ that differs in important ways from that proposed by Brazil.Footnote ¹⁸

One emerging arena of political competition is that of international conflict mediation, an area that has long featured among the aspirations of Brazilian diplomacy. In Africa, Brazil has played an important role in advocating on behalf of Guinea-Bissau and contributing to efforts by the international community to break the country's cycle of political instability.Footnote ¹⁹ More broadly, in 2012 Brazil tried to temper the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” by introducing the idea of “Responsibility while Protecting,”Footnote ²⁰ which resonates with the preoccupation that many African governments have with noninterference. However, Brazil's role in conflict mediation elsewhere in Africa has been extremely limited. In contrast, during a 2013 trip to the continent, Xi Jinping announced that China desired to play a larger role in mediating hotspot issues in Africa.Footnote ²¹ Given how deeply involved China has become in some of Africa's most unstable areas, the statement may represent a new level of political engagement in the continent that has so far eluded Brazil.

Seeing Past the Competition

Despite these elements, China's role in Africa should not be interpreted solely as growing competition for Brazilian stakeholders. First, Brazil is in Africa for somewhat different reasons than China. For the Chinese government, security issues—especially as they relate to ensuring supplies of energy and food—are major drivers of its policy of encouraging investment abroad, especially in Africa. In contrast, Brazil is a major producer and exporter of agricultural commodities, and—since the 2000s—has been practically self-sufficient in energy, with sizeable stores of oil, gas, and hydropower, as well as being a major ethanol producer. Brazil also has vast mineral and other resources, such as wood and cotton. While its companies look to African markets for trade and investment opportunities, links to Africa are not viewed as essential to Brazil's human and economic security, as they are to China's growth and stability. Brazil remains one of the world's most closed economies, while China has abandoned its autarkic aspirations to become deeply involved in the world economy. In some ways, then, China depends on its ties to Africa more than does Brazil.

Second, although China's pockets are deep, in some places Brazil enjoys certain nonmonetary advantages. As one government official involved in financing Brazilian exports put it, “If China wants a project, China will get it. So we have to bet on our differentials: historical ties and a common language. We also stress that we hire the majority of our workforce locally.”Footnote ²² Although China also has developed soft-power strategies in Africa, Brazil has increasingly relied on its particular (especially cultural) channels of influence, as well as corporate practices, that—at least in some contexts—may make it worth it for African partners to favor Brazil's relatively costly capital over Chinese funds. In Angola, Odebrecht hires the vast majority of its workforce locally and runs several capacity-building programs for its workers; the company has also nurtured local ties that have facilitated branching into sectors, even as China also intensifies its cooperation with the country. While Chinese companies' labor practices now vary widely across the continent, high-visibility projects like the construction of the African Union headquarters—carried out overwhelmingly by workers imported from China—have given China a comparatively negative image when it comes to job creation and friendly community relations.

With respect to third-market competition in trade, Brazilian consumer products—especially those that attain high visibility through cultural exposure channels such as the flashy telenovelas that are broadcast in Africa—have become aspirational consumer goods for the growing middle classes of many African countries. Although the previously mentioned rabidantes of Cape Verde, faced with the choice of cheaper Chinese clothing, have scaled back their purchases of Brazilian apparel, they continue to trade in Brazilian brands like Havaianas (flip flops) and Boticário (cosmetics)—both of which have drastically increased their profits by targeting the upwardly mobile in Brazil and abroad.Footnote ²³ In this instance, Chinese goods—viewed by many locals as more affordable yet of inferior quality—may have displaced generic Brazilian goods from Cape Verde, but they have not prevented some Brazilian brands from finding new market niches.

Third, there are growing areas of current as well as potential cooperation between Brazil and China, including in Africa, not least because Brazil's economic well-being has become deeply intertwined with that of China. Bilateral relations between Brazil and China have intensified since 1993, when Brasília and Beijing signed a strategic partnership. Since then, trade between the two countries has soared, with China surpassing the United States to become Brazil's top trade partner in 2009. Chinese companies have begun to accumulate some significant investments in Brazil, either through acquisitions of firms with a Brazilian presence or, increasingly, through more direct investments. In addition, the two countries have joined forces to call for reform of global governance, particularly with respect to the international development architecture. Brazil and China both claim that their development cooperation initiatives are more horizontal, demand-driven, and respectful of national sovereignty than Northern aid. Because of this shared stance, both governments have resisted efforts by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee to “harmonize” the norms of international development according to the principles promoted by Northern donors. The two countries' converging stances on global debates about development norms—which also include a common rejection of market fundamentalism and the belief that the state should play a guiding role in inducing socioeconomic development—mean that Brazil and China have found substantial common ground on key development issues that are highly relevant to Africa.

In addition, in the post-Cold War period, Brazil and China have begun to interact more intensely within multilateral forums, not only in established platforms like the UN, but also through new coalitions like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The 2014 announcement that the BRICS plan to create a New Development Bank focusing on infrastructure, industrial policy, and sustainable development represents yet another mechanism through which Brazil and China may find ways to cooperate in Africa. Even outside the scope of the BRICS, there may be opportunities for Brazil and China to engage in triangular cooperation. (Brazil has an established track record in such projects in Africa, especially with the United States and Japan.) And even in defense, there is some space for complementarity; in Namibia, for instance, the Elephant could be used as a setting for continuing cadet and officer training by Brazil, which maintains a support team in Walvis Bay, where the warship docks.

The changing economic scenario might create new pressures and incentives for Brazilian actors to directly cooperate with their Chinese counterparts, and vice versa. Economic slowdown and emerging budgetary pressures, exacerbated by a steep drop in commodity prices, have limited the capacity of Brazilian transnational companies to invest abroad. Just as China's soaring demand for commodities helped to expand Brazil's economic growth in the 2000s, so has the Chinese slowdown contributed to the recent slump in the Brazilian economy.

In addition, in 2014 a major corruption scandal broke out involving Petrobras, including the financing of its projects abroad (some in Africa). The ensuing federal investigation, dubbed Operação Lava-Jato, or Operation Car Wash, has since spread to include several major construction companies, including ones with major investments in Africa, as well as different branches of the government. Some of Brazil's largest companies have begun to shed jobs and scale down new projects, and BNDES is imposing stricter conditions on its credit lines.Footnote ²⁴ In order to maintain their presence in Africa, or, in certain cases, to ensure the completion of ongoing projects, some Brazilian companies may be prompted to join forces with Chinese firms, for instance through joint ventures or corporate consortia.

On the Chinese side, although recent growth rates—currently hovering around 7.5 percent annual GDP growth—far outpace Brazil's paltry 1 percent per year, the economy is also experiencing relative deceleration. In addition, under Xi Jinping, China's government has begun implementing structural reforms meant to boost the role of domestic consumption, as opposed to investment, as a key driver of growth. Some of these changes are playing out incrementally but may create new opportunities (and new pressures) for China and Brazil to join forces in Africa.

More broadly, far from being mutually exclusive, competition and collaboration typically coexist in bilateral relations, even when media and other popular narratives tend to stress one aspect over the other. As development cooperation intensifies within the African context, these two sides of the coin are likely to become more salient in Brazil and China's roles on the continent, varying across geography, activity sector, and time. In many instances, this diversification may actually benefit African stakeholders, since both competition and collaboration among cooperation providers enhance the “Age of Choice” as African states increasingly make strategic, interested decisions about how to interact with external actors, sometimes playing companies and cooperation providers off against each other.

Finally, neither Brazil nor China operate in a vacuum; in addition to interacting with African actors, who possess different degrees of agency of their own, these two cooperation providers collaborate and compete with third parties from both the advanced economies and other developing countries that maintain a presence in Africa. The changing dynamics described here must thus be understood against this broader and complex ecology of actors, as well as the normative and institutional landscape in which they exist.