Group items tagged

Brazil, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside of Africa itself, is assertively raising its profile again on the continent, building on historical ties from the time of the Portuguese empire.

The charm offensive is paying off in surging trade flows between Brazil and Africa, growing to $27.6 billion in 2011 from $4.3 billion in 2002.

Some of Brazil’s biggest inroads, predictably, are in Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola, where the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht ranks among the largest employers, and Mozambique, where the mining giant Vale has begun a $6 billion coal expansion project.

Under the “Partnership Agreement for Promoting Technical Cooperation with a Focus on South-South Initiatives”, the People’s Republic of China is committing US$1 million over three years to support South-South cooperation and the Decent Work agenda. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China will assist developing countries in Asia promote full employment and decent work, through innovative technical cooperation projects that will facilitate the dissemination of good practices.

The agreement makes China the second of the so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, China, India, the Russian Federation, and South Africa) to sign a South-South agreement with the ILO.