President Lula speaks about Brazil-Angola partnership

I would like to salute the Angolan delegation, the Brazilian delegation, and welcome President João Lourenço and his delegation. It was to Angola that I made my first bilateral visit to Africa on my third administration. Presidente Lourenço attended my inauguration in 2023 and came back last year for the G20 Summit by invitation of the Brazilian presidency.

This State visit is important for several reasons. It celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Angola and 50 years since we established diplomatic relations. Brazil is proud to have been the first country to recognize Angolan independence.

This visit also marks the high point of the Africa Week. Since Monday, 44 delegations from the African continent and nine international organizations have been in Brazil for the 2nd Brazil-Africa Dialog on Food Security, Hunger Eradication, and Rural Development. In fact, this is the first activity of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, which we launched in November last year and which today counts with more than 180 members, 95 of which are countries.

President João Lourenço and I had a fruitful work meeting during which we discussed bilateral, regional, and multilateral issues. Expanding and diversifying the commercial agenda is a priority. We must recall that Brazil has had a trade flow with Angola of four and a half billion dollars, and now we are at a mere one billion and a half. This means, my dear Brazilian ministers (and ministers from Angola, too), that we must work more to make our foreign trade flow achieve the size we believe it to be between our countries.

I am certain that we will soon surpass once again our best moment in the trade flow. For this reason, Petrobras must resume its active participation in prospecting and researching fossil fuels, oil, and gas. We are modernizing the guarantee instruments for export credits. Angola, this is important to recall, Angola has always been a good payer, and it paid off its debt five years in advance.

I am going to say this again so that the Brazilian press can write it down in very bold letters. Angola has always been a good payer, and it paid off its debt five years in advance. So no one needs to be afraid of selling anything from Angola or making any loans to Angola because the Angolan people fulfil their obligations.

Today, we will sign an important agreement that will make it possible to resume financing lines and generate new economic opportunities. We have also discussed advancements in technical cooperation, particularly of the Irrigated Regions and Family Farming Program (Programa de Regiões Irrigadas e Agricultura Familiar) of the Cunene Valley, which we launched in 2023. The training of Angolan technicians will transform a historically arid region into a food production pool, like we did in the São Francisco Valley.

By the way, President João Lourenço, in one of your future visits to Brazil, I will make a point of taking you to see the São Francisco River water diversion project so that you can witness the remarkable irrigation work carried out in a region that was once home to 12 million Brazilians who long suffered from hunger and hardship due to chronic drought.

Then we discovered that the drought was a natural phenomenon, and that we would not be able to produce rain in that location. So we decided to take some of the water that ran in the São Francisco River and was on its way to the sea. We decided that a portion of that water that was headed to the sea could be channeled to serve this region. I hope someday I have the chance to take you there to witness this water diversion project, which was originally proposed by Emperor Dom Pedro I in 1846. He tried to do it and failed because politics got in the way.

When I took office in 2003, I took on the responsibility to build this channel, facing all the problems we had to face, and today the channel is 99% complete. It is never really complete because when we finish one part, there is always another region that wants us to extend the channel, so the channel moves according to the needs of the population. Actually, I said Dom Pedro I, no, it was Dom Pedro II, it was Dom Pedro II because it was in 1846, and Dom Pedro I left in 1831, that’s it. You think I don’t know history?

Well, we are deepening our cooperation in the area of health with a human resources training program that will strengthen the Angolan National Health System. By the way, Sidônio [Sidônio Palmeira, Brazil’s Minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic], yesterday we found a name for the program.

We are launching a program, and the Health Minister will know what it is. It is a program that we have long been trying to implement, and it is finally ready for launch. It is being structured. [This program] will allow the poor population to have the right to what are called specialists, to have the right to an MRI, to have the right to a PET Scan. Because generally, the poor die without having access to specialists and without access to the machines.

So here in Brazil, when we launch this program, the poor will have the right to do the same exams that the President of the Republic does when he goes in for a check-up. This is called nothing more than respect and the attainment of rights.

Our universities offer more than 500 places per year for students from the most varied medical areas. And something else, President João Lourenço, that you must visit when you come to Brazil again, is UNILAB. UNILAB is an Afrodescendant university that was opened during my administration to serve African and Brazilian students. We have one campus in the city of Redenção, in the state of Ceará, which was the first city to abolish slavery. The first city to celebrate the end of slavery was Redenção, in Ceará. And the other one is in Bahia: São Francisco do Conde, where we have another campus. I was honored to go there to deliver the diplomas to the first boys and girls from Africa who graduated here in Brazil.

The plan was to extend this opportunity to the entire African continent, but the first pilot project remained among the Portuguese-speaking countries, which is not bad, but is very little for an internationalist such as myself, who wants to serve more people than Brazil actually needs to.

We will also continue to cooperate in the area of defense and in the modernization of the Angolan air and navy fleets. EMBRAER is available to restore the Angolan fleet of Super Tucano aircraft and to provide additional aircraft. In the area of security... On the issue of aviation, I want to say to the President that we will work with EMBRAER  and BNDES so that it can finance the sale of the three KC-390 aircraft you wish to purchase. In fact, this plane is a substitute for Hércules, and it is a jet plane. It is good for Brazil and good for Angola, and I believe we must make an effort to help Angola purchase these planes.

In the area of security, today our Federal Police and the Angolan National Police signed cooperation instruments to combat organized crime. This is very important. I was telling President João Lourenço that not even the Brazilians are aware that the current Secretary General of Interpol is a Brazilian Federal Police Commissioner. Interpol, which you only saw in movies. Now Brazil has a Secretary General of Interpol, one of the world’s most respected police institutions. So, when you need Interpol, you know that you will find a Brazilian there.

The recent inauguration of the General Consulate in Luanda will provide better service to the 30,000 Brazilian citizens — who comprise our largest community in Africa — and also to the Angolan population. My congratulations to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for opening a consulate in Luanda and for so many Brazilians there. This demonstrates that the Brazilian people are discovering the African countries; they had discovered them in the 17th century, and are now returning there. This is a good sign.

We decided to extend the validity of visiting visas for Angolan nationals, from two to five years. Something else that is very important. As it naturally occurs between strategic partners, we discussed issues of global relevance. Angola and Brazil share a firm commitment to multilateralism and international cooperation, in a context in which the world is facing so many internal and international conflicts.

Angola is an example of a country that plays an important role in the process of Africa’s stabilization and in projecting the continent in the main contemporary dilemmas. I saluted President João Lourenço for the title he received from the African Union as Champion for Peace and Reconciliation, in recognition of his role as a mediator in the crisis between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

So, my friend João Lourenço, there is only one last thing for you to do to make me extremely happy. Only one. I would like you to bring a player from Angola to play for my Corinthians [soccer team], which is not in its best moment.

In November, Brazil will host COP 30 in Belém, at the heart of the Amazon. And I know that we can count on the support from Angola and on your presence, Mr. President. This COP will be very important because it will serve as an indicator of whether the countries of the world want to effectively tackle the climate issue or not. Because there are several presidents who think that nothing is going on with the climate, that everything is running perfectly. And those who believe there is, are worried. And I think that Angola has played an important part.

Africa is the world region that emits the least greenhouse gas, and yet it is among those that suffer the most perverse consequences of global warming. There will be no just transition if the circumstances of the Global South countries are not taken into consideration. By September, all countries must deliver their Nationally Determined Contributions — the well-known NDCs.

Together with FAO, we elaborated a guide for the inclusion of social policies and policies for the transformation of food systems in the NDCs. The rich countries, which benefited the most from the carbon-based economy, must face up to their responsibilities of financing the energy transition.

I shared with President João Lourenço that we will launch the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, which will compensate developing countries that preserve their forests. With territories that encompass significant portions of the world's largest tropical forests — the Amazon and the Congo — Brazil and Angola have a shared responsibility to ensure that the preservation of these biomes is properly rewarded for the ecosystem services they provide.

Our maritime border, in this dear river called the Atlantic, which we share, is composed of a rich fauna and flora on which billions of people depend, directly or indirectly. We must expand our commitments to the sustainable use of maritime biodiversity. This is the message I will take to the third UN Oceans Conference next month in France, in the city of Nice. The ocean also unites us in the Peace and Cooperation Zone of the South Atlantic, which will celebrate 40 years next year.

We will continue to defend these principles during Brazil’s BRICS presidency this year, and Your Excellency is also invited to participate in BRICS here in Brazil.

The consolidation of BRICS as the main coordination space for the emerging countries benefits from the expressive participation of African countries as full members, dialog partners, and guests. I have congratulated my fellow João Lourenço for his election as the rotating President of the African Union and reiterated the invitation for him to attend the BRICS Summit in July, in Rio de Janeiro.

As a great admirer of Angola and an enthusiast of the relationship between Brazil and its African brothers, I am extremely happy with the presence of João Lourenço and his delegation in Brazil. I hope you can enjoy it a little bit, that you get to visit Brasília, visit Brazil, and return whenever you can. I was telling the others who were at the meeting that, from now on, every president with whom I meet, I will ask for their phone number and give them mine.

As I do not own a phone, I give them the number for my advisors or Janja’s [Janja Lula da Silva, Brazil’s First Lady] number. And this is the best agreement we will sign here, because if the press is not aware, they must be. Sometimes, a conversation between two presidents takes 15 days to come through, because you communicate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that you wish to have this conversation. Then, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacts the other country’s Ministry. The other Ministry responds. And they realize that the president of that country is not available, and when they are, the president of this country is not. So we spend 15, 20, 30 days in this process for a three-minute telephone call, everyone...

So from now on, this is how it will go: every president will have my number — but since I don’t have one, they will have Janja’s and my advisors’.

And I want to have everyone’s numbers, because sometimes it is just a quick issue, sometimes it’s only a 30-second issue: "João Lourenço, please, I need this and that." And then João Lourenço picks up, we don’t even need an interpreter. How wonderful. So, you know, this will be the main agreement I will make from now on.

Well, I would like to close here by telling you that, even with all the joy of having João Lourenço here, we received extremely sad news. I would like to request a minute of silence to honor my dear Sebastião Salgado — if not the greatest, he was certainly among the greatest and best photographers the world ever produced — who passed today.

Very well. By the way, I want to make an announcement: we had not anticipated the passing of my dear friend Sebastião Salgado, and the head of our Ceremonial Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already arranged it. We will present, as a gift from Brazil to President João Lourenço, a work of art—a photograph by Sebastião Salgado. You will be receiving a photograph by an extraordinarily special photographer, one of the greatest this planet has ever known.

Thank you, everyone.