Debunking Brazilian Exceptionalism in its Africa Relations:Evidence from Angola and Tanzania

From 2003, President Lula heralded a new dawn in Brazil’s expanding African relations. Brazil was claimed to be unlike other exploitative powers because of its cultural, geographic and historic connections; Africa’s true brother. Despite the passing of two decades and a number of scandals, this narrative of exceptionalism remains. Studies on Brazil–Africa relations tend to focus on the Brazilian state as the key, essentially benign agent. Our analysis uses the case studies of Angola and Tanzania to debunk the idea of Brazilian exceptionalism. We demonstrate the significant, overlooked agency of corporations in shaping and implementing Lula’s Africa Policy, and determining its developmentally dubious outcomes. Additionally, the paper shows how political elites in Africa directed Brazilian government and companies into their political and business norms. Thus, Brazil– Africa relations replicated much of the typical economic patterns of the continent’s trade, with oft-controversial and corrupt investment in commodity extraction and infrastructure.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Política dos diamantes em Angola durante a primeira era colonial: as relações entre o estado e a Diamang 1917-1961

Este artigo tem como objetivo examinar as origens e a evolução do setor dos diamantes em Angola. Ele começa em 1921 com a criação da companhia Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) e termina em 1961 com o início da luta anticolonial. Ao longo desse período, o Estado colonial e o setor dos diamantes desenvolveram uma relação simbiótica: o Estado atribuía os poderes necessários para a Diamang estabelecer um “estado dentro do estado” e, assim, consolidar a presença territorial das autoridades portugueses. Para explicar a emergência e a consolidação dessa relação, o artigo explora as razões pelas quais o Estado colonial cedeu poderes à Diamang, sublinhando sua fraca capacidade institucional para projetar autoridade no interior da colônia de Angola. Em seguida, o artigo mostra como a Diamang passou a ter um papel essencial nos debates sobre política administrativa e fiscal na colônia e na metrópole.Palavras-chave: Lunda - setor dos diamantes - história colonial - Angola.AbstractThis article examines the origins and evolution of the diamond sector in Angola. It begins in 1921 with the creation of DIAMANG and ends in 1961 with the outbreak of the liberation war. It argues that throughout this period (and beyond) the colonial state and the diamond sector shared a complex but ultimately co-constitutive relationship: the state granted DIAMANG the necessary powers, while DIAMANG built a ‘state inside the state’ on the former’s behalf. To explain the emergence – and the persistence – of this relationship, the chapter explores the reasons why the colonial state empowered DIAMANG to perform state functions in Lunda in the first place, highlighting the institutional incapacity of the early colonial state to broadcast its power directly in the hinterland. It then shows how DIAMANG furthered the financial and other interests of Portuguese colonial officials and other influential individuals in the colony as well as in the metropolis, and vice-versa. Keywords: Lunda - diamond sector - colonial history - Angol

Diamantes, desenvolvimento e conflito: o papel do setor mineiro na política de estado e de guerra no Estado Colonial Tardio de Angola, 1961-1974

Este artigo analisa a relação entre o Estado e o setor de diamantes durante a “segunda ocupação colonial” de Angola. Começa em 1961 com o início de uma luta entre vários grupos pelo controle da Angola colonial e termina com a retirada dos portugueses da colônia após a derrubada do Estado Novo por um golpe militar em Lisboa em abril de 1974. Durante esse tempo, o poder colonial português, ao mesmo tempo em que recusou uma abertura política aos movimentos nacionalistas, envolveu-se em uma série de reformas legais e econômicas que colocaram a colônia em um caminho acelerado para a industrialização. No entanto, o setor de diamantes permaneceu essencial à defesa do poder do Estado em uma área estratégica, porém hostil, que ainda permanece, por razões históricas, além do alcance das instituições estatais formais.This article analyzes the relationship between the State and the diamond sector during Angola’s “second colonial occupation”. It starts in 1961 with the beginning of a struggle between various groups for colonial Angola control, and ends with the withdrawal of the Portuguese from the colony after the overthrow of the Estado Novo by a military coup in Lisbon in April 1974. During that time, Portuguese colonialism, while refusing political openness to nationalist movements, became embroiled in a series of legal and economic reforms that put the colony on a fast track for industrialization. However, the diamond sector remained essential to defending State power in a strategic but hostile area – an area that remains, for historical reasons, beyond the reach of formal State institutions

Diamond politics in the Angolan periphery: colonial and postcolonial Lunda 1917–2002

Angola is currently the fifth-largest diamond producer in the world. Yet neither the politics nor the history of Angola's diamond trade receives much attention either in the Angolan scholarship or the thematic literature on the mining sector more generally. The gap in the literature is significant, for diamond companies produce far more than revenue and profits: for some one hundred years, the diamond sector has governed, policed, defended, and controlled the strategic, diamond-rich provinces of Lunda Sul and Lunda Norte. This thesis explores the historical trajectory of the diamond sector in the Lundas. It concentrates on the powerfully symbiotic relationship between the diamond sector and the state from the colonial period to the present time. Drawing on a wide range of untapped official documents as well as interviews, it argues that the diamond sector has functioned historically as the conduit through which the state projects its power and secures its interests in a strategic but hostile territory. The thesis further shows how the politics of resource control both define the state’s strategies towards the diamond sector and perpetuate the entrenched system of privatised governance that has existed in the Lundas for more than a century. The thesis builds upon both the historical and contemporary literature on the mining sector and the literature on state formation. It challenges the conventional notion that the persistent power of private companies in Africa is the result of state weakness or state absence, underlining instead how state leaders instrumentalise and empower companies according to their changing priorities. It also considers the implications of this case study more broadly through a cross-case analysis of mining politics elsewhere in Africa. In the process, this study provides an original approach to state–mining sector relations that is of relevance to scholars working on the politics and political economy of state-making and of resources extraction in Africa.This thesis is not currently available in ORA