Proximity and Distance: The Bilateral Relations Between Brazil and Nigeria in the Twenty-First Century
摘要
This chapter focuses on relations between Brazil and Nigeria in the twenty-first century. Following the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, which occurred in the same year as the African giant’s independence, Brazil and Nigeria have structured a solid relationship. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the African country was a priority partner in Brazilian African policy. The strong partnership underwent a significant weakening throughout the 1990s. During this period, while Brazil experienced a reorientation of its foreign policy, which implied a move away from the African continent, Nigeria experienced significant internal instability. The failure to return to a democratic regime at the beginning of the decade, together with the dictatorial regime of Sani Abacha (1993–1998), promoted a deterioration of the country’s image and fomented its international isolation. It was only with the beginning of the twenty-first century that the relationship underwent a new transformation. While Nigeria entered a phase of renewed international insertion and continental protagonism, enabled both by the restoration of its democracy in 1999 and by the accelerated increase in relations with extracontinental actors, from 2003 onward, Brazil began to assume a stance of increasing protagonism in international relations, which had the resumption and intensification of ties with Africa as one of its central pillars. As a result, relations between Brazil and Nigeria experienced renewed strengthening throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. Since then, however, not only have international relations, as a whole, undergone significant transformations, but both countries have also experienced major changes (in economic, political, social, diplomatic terms, etc.), which have had consequences for bilateral relations. Given this, and based on qualitative analysis of primary sources and bibliographic review, the chapter seeks to understand how relations between the largest democracies in Africa and Latin America have evolved throughout the twenty-first century. To this end, both the internal transformations occurring in the countries and those experienced more broadly in international relations are taken into account. We seek to demonstrate that, despite the countless variables that affect these relations, the changes that occurred in Brazilian foreign policy throughout the period had the most meaningful influence on the changes experienced by the relations between the two countries.