Abstract:
Africa in the past decade has become a place for international business investments, particularly in the areas of natural resources exploitation. The Brazilian company, Vale do Rio Doce, is one of these companies which has invested in coal mining in Mozambique. On the one hand, the presence of this company in Tete-Mz has increased the potential for development and is considered as an important investment for the economic development of the country. On the other hand, this presence and its dealings in the social and environmental areas, frustrating the expectations of the local populations, has created different types of protests. This present text situates the presence of the Vale do Rio Doce and other Brazilian companies in Africa, within the situation of Brazilian political and economic diplomacy undertaken in the past decade as well as the incentives adopted by African countries, in particular Mozambique, to attract investment. The text contains an analysis of the Vale company in Mozambique, together with other mining projects. Attention is given to an analysis of the manifestations which occurred starting in 2012, by the Vale workers [by those resettled by the Vale], situating these confrontations as a visible part of the tension generated not only by the Vale company, but by all the mining megaprojects. The question raised is how these confrontations form part of a latent movement concerned with issues related to Mozambican internal policies relative to the megaprojects which are producing wealth without retaining it within the country. Thus cooperation between Brazil an Mozambique (and Africa) in the sense of establishing vertical and horizontal relations does not depend only on cooperative agreements but also on the internal and external political dynamics, in which the Vale company is only one of the actors. Therefore, the text proposes itself to underline research questions related to connected transnational social and political processes, posing, as a general framework the current debate about development, dependence and South-South cooperation relations.
Keywords:
Brazilian external political; Economic development; Social protests; Brazil and Africa relations; Vale do Rio Doce; Mozambique