The day after his inauguration in January, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with Umaro Sissoco Embaló, the president of Guinea-Bissau, a West African nation of just over two million people. Lula called Mr. Embaló’s nation “an important African country that also speaks Portuguese,” adding “that Brazil will once again make Africa a priority in its relations with the world.”
Lula has long emphasized Brazil’s deep ties with the African continent as a whole, a relationship rooted in the slave trade, and with specific countries like Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique — which share Brazil’s experience of Portuguese colonization. He has cited Brazil’s “historical debt” to Africa as a reason for deeper diplomatic relations in the 21st century.
So far, however, that foreign policy priority has had to wait.
Well aware of the symbolic importance of a presidential visit, the Lula administration has been strategic about where he has gone, when, and for how long (an important consideration given the climate of political uncertainty that followed the January 8 right-wing insurrection in Brasília).
His first trip abroad was to neighboring Argentina and Uruguay, signaling...
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