A cooperação educacional na política externa brasileira para o continente africano: o Programa Estudante - Convênio de Graduação

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the G-PEC as an instrument of Brazilian foreign policy for the African continent, seeking to understand the program, its relation with foreign policy and Brazilian interests in cooperating with the continent. For this purpose, bibliography and official documentation about the program, South-South cooperation, Brazilian foreign policy and the relationship between Brazil and Africa were used. The relationship between Brazil and the African continent dates from the Brazilian colonial period and the slave trade. The African continent has played a central role in Brazilian foreign policy in the 21st century through the discourses of historical debt, solidarity, and mutual development and cultural similarity. Understood and used by Brazil as an instrument of its foreign policy to promote relations with the countries and regions of priority interest, South-South Cooperation gained prominence in the twenty-first century as an effective strategic option in promoting international development and in the projection of Brazilian Soft Power. Within South-South cooperation, Brazil develops educational cooperation that may be of an academic or technical nature. This work focuses on the Undergraduate Student Agreement - PEC-G, which is a Brazilian academic cooperation. Officially established in 1965, the PEC-G came to regulate the large number of foreign students who came to study in Brazil. Nowadays, with the majority of the students received being of African origin, the program is presented as a means of promoting economic development and political and cultural approximation.