Speech by President Lula during meeting with African Union ministers of Agriculture

My dear companion Janja.

Ms. Thulisile Dladla, deputy prime minister of the Kingdom of Eswatini, on whose behalf I greet the heads of delegation and other representatives of African countries.

My dear colleague Geraldo Alckmin, vice president of Brazil and minister of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services.

My dear Mauro Vieira, minister of Foreign Affairs, on whose behalf I greet the ministers who are present here.

It is important to remind you that there are three people present here... four very important people who will accompany you during your stay in Brazil.

Firstly, our dear Silvia [Massruhá], president of the Brazilian Agricultural Technology Company (Empresa de Tecnologia Agrícola Brasileira) Embrapa — one of the companies responsible for the success of Brazilian agriculture.

It is important that you stand up so that people can see who Silvia is.

Another important person is Minister Carlos Fávaro, Brazilian Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, who will also be with you.

Another important minister is our colleague Paulo Teixeira, Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Farming.

Another very important minister who has a lot to discuss with you is Minister Wellington Dias, minister of Development and Social Assistance, Family and the Fight Against Hunger.

And, finally, the minister who will teach everyone how to fish: our colleague André de Paula, minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Well, my dear comrades, first of all, it is a great joy to be able to spend time with you at this second historic moment.

In fact, the first Brazil-Africa Dialogue on food security [Brazil-Africa Dialogue on Food Security, Fight Against Hunger and Rural Development] was also called by me in 2010 when I was President of Brazil. Although this is the second Brazil-Africa Dialogue, this is actually Brazil's first meeting with its allies in the [Global] Alliance against Hunger and Poverty approved at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro last year. The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty is an attempt to ensure that we are able to produce food and things that people need, trying to raise awareness in the rest of the world while, at the same time, creating indignation in people's minds around the following: we must not accept that, in the first half of the 21st century, after all our technological revolution, after all our genetic revolution, after all the evolution of universities, after all that we have learned, we still have 730 million people going hungry in the world.

This is a milestone that we cannot forget, but we must talk about it every single day, in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night. Because those who are hungry are not the ones who need to listen to us. Those who are hungry are the ones who need to speak.

It is important that we are clear that no country in the world can be sovereign if its people do not have the right to have breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day. When I took office for my first term, in 2003, the most sacred thing I said in my speech was that if, by the end of my term, I had ensured that every Brazilian man and woman was having breakfast, lunch and dinner, I would have already accomplished the work of my life. We managed to take Brazil off the hunger map — because, when we started in 2003, there were 54 million people in Brazil who were going hungry.

We managed to take Brazil off the hunger map in 2012. Fifteen years later, I returned to the Presidency and we had 33 million people going hungry again. This was a clear demonstration that hunger is not a question of bad weather, drought or rain — because all of this is part of nature.

We learned that hunger is not caused by nature or any other event. Hunger is often caused by the irresponsibility of those who govern countries, who do not make hunger a priority to be resolved in their country. Only those who have never been hungry do not care about hunger.

Only those who have never seen a child crying for a glass of milk without having any milk to drink are not concerned about hunger. And we, human beings, have the ability to change this, no matter how poor our country is. It is simply a matter of determining priorities: who do I want to govern, who do I want to serve, and who needs me most? In fact, who needs the State? Who should the State serve? This is a decision that only we, the government, can make.

I always say that the President of the Republic should never forget the speech he made to win the elections. When we win an election, we should take the speech we made during the elections, put it on our bedside table, and every morning, when we get up, we should read what we said so that we do not forget what we said.

Because many times, many times, election speeches are forgotten the day after the elections. And when I decided to invite you to come to Brazil, it was so that we could exchange ideas, but at the same time, not be ashamed to show you the successful experiences in this country. Because anyone could have ended hunger in Brazil.

Anyone. Any president of this country could have prevented anyone from going hungry. It turns out that, often, the poorest people are not a priority for most governments.

And it is very sad to know that the world spent 2 trillion and 400 billion dollars on weapons and conflicts last year. It did not have the same courage or audacity to spend this money teaching people how to plant and cultivate what we eat in each country.

So what I want is for you to be completely free to ask whatever you want to; to try to say whether you liked or disliked the things you heard; to question — because Brazil has a historical debt to the African continent.

We owe the African continent what we are, our color, our art, our culture, our way of being. We owe it to them for 350 years in which this country exploited a large part of the African people.

I am aware that Brazil cannot pay this in money — and also that this cannot be measured in money. Brazil can pay in solidarity, in technology transfer, so that you can produce part of what we produce.

I have been interested in the African continent for a long time. A long time. It was the continent I visited the most. During my first term, we opened 19 new embassies in Africa. We took Embrapa to Ghana — but this did not work out, I do not know why. We built a hospital, a school, and a university in Mozambique, which we wanted to expand to other countries. We built a hospital and a factory to produce antiretroviral drugs, to try to help distribute them on the African continent. And after we left the government, after President Dilma [Rousseff] was impeached, all of that went backwards.

All of this has receded. Because, in truth, many people do not want to see the African continent. Many people look past it to see Europe directly.

And we cannot forget that the African continent has a lot to do with the history of this country. In fact, I do not know if this country would be this country if we had not existed alongside the slave labor of Africans here in Brazil for three and a half centuries.

So what Brazil can do is exactly that: to look from a special perspective, with a special affection, and not treat the relationship with Africans as if you were, you know, the poor of the world — and that we should not deal with you because you cannot pay.

In my opinion, the relationship with the African continent is different. In my opinion, Africa is part of Brazil and Brazil should be proud to say that it is part of Africa. That is the pride we should take.

That is why you are here. On the 23rd, which is the national day of Africa, we will have a meeting here with the president of Angola. You will be there. But what I want is for you to enjoy it.

Enjoy it. I remember when we created Unilab [University for the International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony].

I had two important desires in my life. One was to create a Brazil-Africa university so that we could bring students from Africa to study here in Brazil, together with the Brazilians. And we managed to create Unilab. And one of the most important things in my life was the first graduation ceremony of Unilab in São Francisco do Conde, Bahia, in which I participated by presenting a diploma.

Then we wanted to create a Latin American university. A university that would have a Latin American curriculum, Latin American professors, like Unilab, and also African professors, African students, so that we can be sure that we are creating a new world. Or at least trying to create a more different, more humane, more supportive, more fraternal world.

Especially at this time when people talk a lot —a lot — about artificial intelligence, algorithms. What we need is to take advantage of all these technological advances to produce food, which is what the people want.

Part of the population wants everything in life. They want to eat. They want to have drinking water. They want electricity, which is the most basic thing for a country to grow. I once visited the African Union; I went to Addis Ababa, when Madame Zuma [Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma] was president of the African Union. At the time, the African Union had launched a development program for Africa that cost around 360 billion dollars, a program for all African countries. I went to Addis Ababa to propose to Madame Zuma that it would be important for the African Union to call a meeting of all the development banks in the world, of all the businesspeople from engineering companies in the world, so that the African Union could show the world, call the IMF, call the World Bank, call Brazilian banks, businesspeople from all over the world, from the construction industry, to go to Africa, to convince them that we could participate in the creation of the basic infrastructure necessary for Africa.

Unfortunately, I cannot explain why, but this meeting was never held, it was never called for, and I do not know what the investment plan is like.

What I do know is that there are still African countries with less than 20% of the population with electricity. What I know is that there are still no roads. What I know is that there is still a lack of treated water.

What I know is that other countries lack respect for the African continent. I want to tell you that, after this meeting here, after the results that you manage to produce here, we, internally in my government, will hold another meeting with the same ministers who traveled with you, with the same Embrapa, and we will decide what we can do to stop the high-sounding speeches and the low execution of experience-sharing programs. The region where you are now, in Brasília, which is part of the Cerrado, in Mato Grosso, a part of Minas Gerais, and Goiás, 50 years ago, was considered by all of us Brazilians to have bad land.

The land of the Cerrado is no good. Nothing we plant here will not grow. However, today we have discovered that this region is one of the most productive in the country, because with the advancement of science and land management, there is no longer any unproductive land anywhere in the world.

How many times have I tried to convince Brazilian businesspeople to invest in Africa? Even to produce in Africa and sell to Europe, which is friendly with prices, and buys more from Africa, if it produces at a more affordable price, with fewer taxes. And it is very difficult to convince people.

Even when we said that the African savannah has the same soil quality as the Brazilian Cerrado and that, therefore, the African savannah could be, who knows, an initial milestone in the agricultural revolution that the African continent would make in the eyes of the world. And I think that this still stands. I think that African countries that were self-sufficient in food production before colonization, colonization made them forget how to produce what to eat and depend on the excess food produced in the colonizing country. This is not humanly correct, it is not humanly acceptable. And we need to learn to shout, we need to learn to say that we cannot accept this anymore.

Imagine if the money that is being spent on the war between Ukraine and Russia, on the fight with Ukraine, was being spent on food production. Imagine if the money that the Israeli army spends to kill women and children in the Gaza Strip were used to transfer technology to countries that need a lot of technology. The world would be different.

This is the Brazil that I want you to get to know. I do not know if we have much to teach you, but we certainly have a lot to learn from you, since the African continent is the cradle of humanity. Therefore, I would like to say welcome to Brazil.

Take advantage of your presence here in Brazil, because something different from what has been happening up until now must come out of your visit here. I want to tell you, looking into the faces of every man and woman, Brazil can help. Brazil has the means to help.

We just need to take responsibility for treating you with the respect and affection that you need. Thank you very much.