MNAKU MBANI

The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently conducted his official visit to Africa and Tanzania in particular. 
His mission, among other things, was to strengthen economic ties between Brazil and African countries, considering a 500-year-historical relationship between the two sides.
The President concluded his African tour last week in South Africa, but the Brazilian team's defeat in the quarter finals of the 2010 World Cup (WOZA 2010) must have been a great disappointment to him. Brazil was tipped by many as possible champions of this year's tournament.
Brazil, like India and China, is strategically positioning herself as a world economic giant.
Political analysts see Da Silva’s tour as his last political gesture towards Africa before his ten-year-presidential term ends early next year.

The outspoken left wing politician holds that the developing nations should take up the challenge of driving the world economy since the developed economies have reached their peak and are at dwindling stage.
Mr. Da Silva's best allies include the Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castrol, Venezuelan President Hugo Charves and Bolivian Ivo Morales.
Others are Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, North Korean Jong Ill Kim, and Iranian, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejan.

Da Silva asserts that the era of the developed world has passed and the developing nations are now faced with a task of either feeding the world or supplying goods and services to meet the global demand.
He stated that his country was willing to transfer knowledge and necessary technology to stimulate the economy and advance football as well.
The world soccer governing body, FIFA’s official statistics show that Tanzania's ranking in the world soccer improved between 2004 and 2010, thanks to Marcio Maximo, another Brazilian.
 Apart from targeting economic opportunities available in Tanzania, Mr Da Silva reminded Tanzanians of the long standing debt that was borrowed to improve infrastructure, and which he was thinking of writing off.
The money was borrowed in the 1980s and was used to tarmac the Morogoro-Dodoma road.
Brazil gave Tanzania US$49 million (Tsh250 million- the 1980s official exchange rate) but has accumulated to US$143 million (Tsh240 billion).
The Brazilian President said that Finance Ministers form the two countries will start fresh negotiations before reaching the decision to cancel the debt.
Political analysts, however, see the basis of this debt relief as economic interests that Brazil has in Tanzania.
Brazilians like Africans
The President said that Africans and Brazilians have similar cultural background. He said that Africans who were taken to Latin America some 500 years ago were the link that integrated the two communities.
“We always learn culture, arts and smile from Africa. We admire the way African love each other.” He said at one of the events he addressed here in Tanzania.

But who is Lula da Silva?
Mr. Lula is a founding member of the Workers' Party (PT –Partido dos Trabalhadores). He ran for Presidency three times unsuccessfully, first time in the 1989 election. He won in 2002 and was re-elected for a second term in 2006.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was born on 27 October 1945 in Caetés. He had little formal education. He did not go to school until he was ten, and later quit schooling after the fourth grade in order to work to help his family.
His working life began at 12 as a shoe-shine boy and street vendor. At 14 he got his first formal job in a copper processing factory as a lathe operator.
At the age of 19, he lost the little finger on his left hand in an accident while working as a press operator in an automobile parts factory.
In his 10 years rule, Lula has pumped billions of dollars into social programmes and can reasonably claim to be reversing Brazil's historic inequalities.
But Lula's administration has been plagued by a number of corruption scandals, most notably being the Mensalão and Sanguessugas scams, in his first term.
Global cognition
He was chosen as the 2009 Man of the Year by prominent European newspapers El País and Le Monde. The Financial Times ranks Lula among the 50 faces that shaped the 2000s.
On December 20, 2008, he was named the 18th most important person in the world by the Newsweek magazine, and was the only Latin American person featured on a list of 50 most influential World leaders.
In July 2009, he received UNESCO's Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize. He was also awarded the Chatham House Prize in November 2009. 
The prize is given to statespersons deemed by Chatham House members to have made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.
President Lula was named a Global Statesman by the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland on January 29, 2010.
Later this year, the Time Magazine again picked Lula as one of the most influential leaders of the world.