The place of Africa in Brazil’s foreign policy after 2003.

Abstract

The beginning of the Lula administration in 2003 marked the deepening and acceleration of a process that began to emerge during the Fernando Henrique Cardoso second-term. The new Brazilian foreign policy globalist profile, as opposed to bilateral foreign policy and aligned with the United States in the 1990s, aimed at international recognition of Brazil as an emerging country and diversification of partners, especially in the South. The growing diplomatic and economic weight acquired the African continent in foreign relations of Brazil after 2003 demonstrates a shift of Brazil’s foreign policy to its Southern partners at the expense of removal and selectivity of the 1990s. This article aims to analyze the place of Afro-Brazilian relations within the foreign policy of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Sustained hypothesis is that Africa is an important commercial and diplomatic frontier for Brazil and for that reason had strengthened its position within the spectrum of Brazilian partners. For this, cooperation and diplomatic relations will be reviewed in the period from the Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s first term in 2003 to the end of the Dilma Rousseff’s first term in 2014.