180 MANIJA! IJI I SUM

Portugal’s long-standing historical connections with Africa, and its current economic, developmental and cultural interests in the PALOPs, frame Portugal’s relations with Africa as a whole. These underlying Lusophone interests, which guide Portuguese foreign policy interactions beyond the PALOPs, are evident in three particular areas, each one outlined in detail below. The first being the importance of the Portuguese- speaking communities in guiding Portugal’s bilateral relations with countries such as South Africa and the importance of building up strong relations between Portugal and countries neighbouring PALOPs. The second area of interest to highlight is Portugal’s support for African development beyond the PALOPs. Within this, given Portugal’s limited bilateral funds available to support non-PALOPs, addressing wider Africa through multilateral organisations, particularly the EU, is a way of amplifying Portugal’s contribution to international development goals and boosting its overall impact on Africa. The third area of interest to focus on is Portugal’s efforts to raise awareness of Africa during Portugal’s Presidencies of the Council of the European Union. The persistence of Lusophone interests in Portugal’s relations with the whole of Africa, not just the PALOPs, have increasingly spilled over from building mostly bilateral relations with countries neighbouring former Portuguese colonies, and countries with sizeable Portuguese-speaking communities, to locating relations in the wider multilateral context.

– The Portuguese-speaking communities in Africa outside of the PALOPs –

As affirmed in the Council of Ministers Resolution 188/2008, of 27 November 2008, the Portuguese language is a fundamental element of Portuguese foreign policy, which reinforces Portuguese identity throughout the world. It is a duty of the Portuguese State to promote and preserve the distinctiveness of the Portuguese language. This means working with CPLP member countries, but also building relations with countries where

there are sizeable expatriate Portuguese communities (Resolução do Conselho de Ministros 188/2008, of 27 November 2008: 8525).

In Portuguese foreign policy terms, the Lusophone world, therefore, extends beyond the historical boundaries of the Portuguese State and beyond the member countries of the CPLP. There are significant Portuguese communities and diasporas of ‘Luso- descendants’ in North America, Venezuela, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and South Africa (Stock, 2004: 256). With a sizeable Portuguese community in Venezuela, Portugal has to tread carefully when confronting, or being openly critical of, regimes such as Chavez’s Venezuela. As a result of this, Portugal is open to accusations of being “soft” on such regimes. Portugal faced similar diplomatic difficulties during the apartheid regime in South Africa and had to be “pragmatic” but resolute in defending the interests of the resident Portuguese community in the country and managing the flow of Portuguese migrants from Angola and Mozambique into the country after decolonisation (Interview 3, Lisbon, 2010).

In the eyes of Portugal’s foreign policy-making elite, South Africa is the most important country in sub-Saharan Africa outside of the CPLP, because of the million-strong Portuguese community in the country (Interview 3, Lisbon, 2010). But the wider importance of the Portuguese language in southern Africa, with Angola and Mozambique close neighbours and thousands of students learning Portuguese in South Africa (Gorjão, 2010d: 1; Público, 2004: 21), has seen South Africa become an important priority for Portugal. Partially because of the potential economic benefits of exploring the Portuguese community market in South Africa, relations between South Africa and Portugal have, in recent years, returned to be a more important priority at the bilateral level, rather than being handled at a multilateral level through the EU (Gorjão, 2010d: 1).

Lusophone motivations also underpin Portugal’s relations with other sub-Saharan African countries. As outlined above, the three countries with official observer status at the CPLP also have an important place in Portuguese foreign policy in Africa. These countries, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal and Mauritius, have recognised the importance of the Portuguese language. Senegal in particular is a growth area for the Portuguese language with approximately 17,000 students of Portuguese in secondary education and 700 students enrolled on the Portuguese university course at UCAD in Dakar (Lusa,

2008). For 2011–2013, Senegal was a recipient of Portuguese bilateral development assistance with the launch of a specific co-operation programme for the country, something which is normally reserved for full members of the CPLP (IPAD, 2011b). The country’s decision to embrace the Portuguese language is something mutually beneficial, but highlights the underlying Lusophone interests which motivate Portuguese development co-operation in Africa. At the same time, exploring relations and building strong ties in sub-Saharan Africa with countries beyond the PALOPs represents the ‘diversification’ of Portuguese foreign policy in Africa and this is linked up with international and regional multilateral organisations such as the Southern African Development Community, the Economic Community of West African States, the African Union, the CPLP and the EU (Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, 2011a).

– Supporting development beyond the PALOPs: the motivations behind locating relations with Africa in the multilateral context –

For Portugal, it is considered “only natural” to continue to focus its development assistance primarily on Lusophone countries. Yet in spite of this firm commitment, “the recent trend of allocating a part of development cooperation resources to other countries shall be continued” (IPAD, 2006: 31). Given the limited development aid budget for non-Lusophone states—IPAD’s 2011 bilateral assistance budget for ‘Other Countries’ was €622,746.23, which represents only 2 per cent of the total (see figure 4.1 and table 4.2)—Portugal’s resources have been targeted on countries where Portugal has important historical and Portuguese-speaking connections, namely Senegal and South Africa (IPAD, 2006: 31).

While the main focus of Portuguese development assistance for the PALOPs is through bilateral relations, development co-operation with other African countries is mainly located in the multilateral context. Portugal’s support for the wider European efforts to provide development assistance for Africa, under the Yaoundé Convention, the Lomé Convention and the Cotonou Agreement, demonstrates a commitment even to countries where Portugal has few historical connections (IPAD, 2006: 30). The ‘bi-multi approach’ of Portuguese development co-operation means that bilateral support for the PALOPs is protected. Yet, at the same time, multilateral support for development projects in Africa, under the auspices of organisations such as the United Nations, is encouraged where a multilateral approach would offer significant added value (IPAD,

2006: 32). This approach suggests that Portuguese development co-operation is moving into a period of flexibility, partially in response to the challenges of globalisation and the strength of multilateral political organisations, but also because of an acute awareness of the country’s limited economic funds, particularly for non-PALOPs which are less of a priority.

Portuguese bilateral aid is mostly concentrated on the Lusophone world. Therefore, it is logical that Portugal is most supportive of multilateral interventions which are targeted on these “priority countries” (IPAD, 2011d: 13–14). Portuguese multilateral development co-operation is guided by the three Cs: ‘co-ordination’; ‘coherence’; and ‘complementarity’ (IPAD, 2011d: 10–11). This approach puts international organisations at the centre of the process and seeks to make sure that Portugal’s bilateral interests in the Lusophone world, and its efforts to improve the developmental prospects of its former colonies, are congruent with the objectives of the wider international community and the Millennium Development Goals. The multilateralisation of Portuguese development policy, clearly, does not translate into an abandonment of its foreign policy priorities in the Lusophone world.

– Raising awareness of Africa: Portugal and its Presidencies of the EU Council – The rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union has been characterised by particular Member States using their six-month incumbency to raise ‘priority’ issues from their own national foreign policy areas of interest. A major criticism of the rotating Presidency system was that Member States did precisely this; hence the changes made under the Treaty of Lisbon to give the EU greater continuity in external affairs (Cameron, 2007: 47). For the Portuguese Council Presidencies of 1992, 2000, and 2007, Africa was a central theme and reflected its status as a ‘priority’ issue in Portuguese national foreign policy, mainly because of Portugal’s ties to its former colonies.

Since the decolonisation process began after the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, successive governments in Lisbon have tried to maintain privileged relations with the PALOPs. These relatively cordial pre-existing relationships gave Portugal a useful niche to develop European relations with Africa in the EU context. This “comparative advantage” allowed Portugal to use its Council Presidencies to act as “a constructive bridge-builder between the two continents” (Ferreira-Pereira, 2008: 65). Portugal laid the foundations in its 2000 Presidency, overseeing the signing of the Cotonou

Agreement and the first ever EU–Africa Summit in Cairo. Portugal built upon these successes when its turn to take the rotating Council Presidency came around in the second half of 2007, hosting the second EU–Africa Summit in Lisbon during December of that year (Sócrates, 2007: 14).

In the view of Portugal’s foreign policy-making elite, the 2007 Presidency was successful as Portugal was able to “mobilise” the EU in order to move relations with the PALOPs forward (Interview 3, Lisbon, 2010). Together with the EU–Africa Summit in Lisbon, the Portuguese Presidency strengthened its bond with the PALOPs by externalising its bilateral relationship onto the EU level by signing agreements between the EU and the Lusophone world. The Portuguese Presidency of 2007 oversaw the signing of memoranda of understanding between the European Commission and the Lusophone ACP countries (namely the five PALOPs and East Timor) and between the European Commission and the Executive Secretariat of the CPLP (Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, 2007: 196).

Although Portugal’s national foreign policy interests in Lusophone Africa were clearly evident, the 2007 Presidency, crucially, revealed the Europeanisation and multilateralisation of Portugal’s relations with Africa. Portuguese political elites skilfully portrayed the country’s domestic priority of strengthening ties with Lusophone Africa as being in the wider European interest by framing the relationship with Africa in terms of the strategic interests for Europe as a whole, emphasising the globalised, multilateral, context (Ferreira-Pereira, 2008: 65). A key Portuguese foreign policy priority was, therefore, constructed to be part of common European foreign policy interests.

The Council Presidencies were used by Member States to ‘project’ national priorities onto the EU, but were also loci for intense elite socialisation in Brussels, which, arguably, can contribute to officials shifting from thinking in terms of national foreign policy to thinking in ‘European’ terms (Wong, 2008: 328). Making the national and the European more symbiotic, by externalising national foreign policy in this way, reflects a social learning process, and that states increasingly know what national priorities can be projected onto the EU level. As Hayes-Renshaw (1999) argues, when it comes to managing a successful Presidency “experience counts” (Hayes-Renshaw, 1999: 35); building upon previous experiences each time the Presidency comes around is key. By

building upon these experiences, and making progress in addressing national foreign policy priorities whilst chairing EU Council meetings, the importance of the EU Council Presidency as a platform has become engrained at the national level. Alongside this, there has also been a gradual recognition of the increased relevance of the EU more broadly as an international actor. These developments can be viewed, legitimately, as aspects of the Europeanisation of national foreign policy.

Africa was, undoubtedly, Portugal’s foreign policy specialism. It was in Portugal’s strategic interests to maximise the rotating Council Presidencies to enhance its own relations with Africa. At the same time, Portugal used this opportunity to put its expertise and connections with Africa at the service of the EU. These actions reflect the Europeanisation of Portuguese foreign policy; the recognition of the role of international multilateral institutions as legitimate vehicles for enhancing co-operation (particularly enhancing co-operation between regional blocs and shifting from thinking in national/bilateral terms to thinking in terms of European Union and the African Union); but also, crucially, the persistence of Africa, principally Portuguese-speaking Africa, to Portugal’s core foreign policy interests.

4.3.2 Locating the African vocation in the multilateral context: creating new