Addis Ababa – The Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reiterated this Saturday, in Addis Ababa, the link between his country and people with the African continent.
In an intervention during the opening of the 37th African Union (AU) summit, Lula da Silva valued his return to Africa, promising to help this continent become independent in the production of food and clean energy.
“It is with great joy that I return, for the 21st time, to Africa, now again as President of Brazil, to address the AU leaders. I come to reaffirm the partnership and bond between our country and our people with this brother continent”, he said.
The statesman recalled that the African struggle has a lot in common with the challenges in Brazil, where more than half of the 200 million Brazilians recognize themselves as Afro-descendants.
He stated that Brazil wants to grow together with Africa, but without dictating paths to anyone, recognizing that this continent “has enormous possibilities for the future”.
He said he was proud to say that thousands of Africans have completed their studies in Brazil, that he is willing to “do even more”, and promised to increase the number of scholarships offered to receive African students in Brazilian public higher education institutions.
According to Lula da Silva, Brazil is willing to develop educational programs in Africa, promote intense exchanges of teachers and researchers and collaborate so that Africa can become independent in the production of food and clean energy.
He invited Africans and Brazilians to chart their own paths in the International Order, creating a new global governance, “capable of facing the challenges of our time”.
For Lula da Silva, the theses of the minimum state are no longer in force, and planning agricultural and industrial development has “returned” to being part of public policies in all quarters.
Energy and digital transitions require encouragement and guidance from governments, he argued, highlighting that attempts to restore an international system based on ideological blocs “have no basis in reality”.
World conflicts
Regarding the current international situation marked by conflicts, Lula da Silva said that the time is ripe to rescue the best humanist traditions of the great leaders of African decolonization.
In his opinion, being a humanist today implies, for example, condemning the attacks carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians and demanding the immediate release of all hostages.
Being a humanist, he continued, also requires rejection of Israel's disproportionate response, which killed almost 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza in around four months, with the victims being mostly women and children.
He highlighted that Israel's military offensive in Gaza caused the forced displacement of “more than 80% of the population”.
For the Brazilian statesman, the solution to this crisis will only be lasting if rapid progress is made in the creation of a Palestinian State, recognized as a full member of the United Nations and a strengthened UN with a more representative Security Council, without countries with veto power and with permanent members from Africa and Latin America.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, he stated that it “opened up” the paralysis of the UN Security Council with a tragic loss of life whose consequences are felt throughout the world, in the price of food and fertilizers.
“There will be no military solution to this conflict. The time has come for politics and diplomacy”, he stressed.
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