Lula hosts meeting with President of the African Development Bank

This Tuesday (23), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosted a meeting at the Planalto Palace with the President of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina. Brazil’s Minister of Planning and Budget, Simone Tebet, accompanied the meeting, which lasted about one hour.

This is Adesina’s third visit to Brazil. The country has been an extra-regional member of the bank since 1983. During his previous visits as a representative of the Nigerian Government, Adesina was introduced to Brazilian social programs and policies and visited the National Bank for Social and Economic Development (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social  - BNDES).

Everything Brasil can do to collaborate with African development, in every field, we will do”                                                          LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA, President of the Republic

“Thank you for always putting Africa as a priority. Your statement at the Summit of the African Union demonstrated it. Thank you for your efforts in making the African Union a part of the G20. And I congratulate you for your leadership in calling the world’s attention to the need for development and for anti-hunger and poverty actions”, said Adesina this Tuesday.

During the current visit, the executive also met with Ministers Carlos Fávaro (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply) and Nísia Trindade (Health). On Brazil’s health system (Sistema Único de Saúde - SUS), Adesina declared to President Lula his admiration for universal access to healthcare. “We will invest USD 3 billion to develop our pharmaceutical producing capacity. Africa currently imports 80% of the medicine it consumes”, he said, highlighting that Brazil can be an important ally for Africa in the fields of technology, pharmaceutical production capacity, and experience in universalizing access to health.

Regarding the bank’s activities, Adesina highlighted the prioritization of five strategic areas: the universalization of access to electricity; food security and hunger eradication; logistic integration among African countries; industrialization; and the general improvement of the quality of life. He also pointed out that bank-financed projects have impacted 400 million people directly in the last seven years. Additionally, together with Minister Simone Tebet, he highlighted the formalization of Brazil’s adherence to the Lusophone Pact (Pacto Lusófono), an agreement aiming to develop the private sector in Portuguese-speaking African countries, generating new opportunities for Brazilian investors in Africa.

The executive also demonstrated great interest in Embrapa (the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) and its projects to transform the Cerrado into a productive area. “The African savannah is very similar to the Cerrado”. Adesina congratulated President Lula on the Global Alliance Against Poverty and Hunger, an initiative Brazil will launch in the context of the G20.

“Everything Brasil can do to collaborate with African development, in every field, we will do”, stated President Lula, recalling the cooperation and support initiatives promoted during his previous presidential terms. These included the production of anti-retroviral medicines in Mozambique; setting up an Embrapa office in Ghana; opening a SENAI office in Angola; creating the open university in Mozambique; and creating the University of International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira -UNILAB) in Brazil.

“All this comes to show that you are visiting a country that is a friend of Africa”, continued Lula. “We are committed to assisting Africa’s development. We advocate that part of the African countries' debt be transmuted into investments in development, especially in infrastructure”, he underpinned, recalling the African Union Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA).

Lula stressed that there are many small-scale credit programs in Brazil and invited Adesina to get to know them. “It was only yesterday that we announced a credit program for people from every income level, and that 52% of this credit must go to women,” he stated, alluding to Programa Acredita.

Finally, President Lula stressed Brazil’s argument in defense of the global governance institutions reform. “We must convince the world that, if there isn’t some sort of development assistance, the poorest countries will only become poorer, and the richest will become richer”.