Paper short abstract:

This paper compares Brazilian and Chinese engagement in Africa’s energy sector in regards to their motivations, policies, strategies and implementing agents.

Paper long abstract:

For decades African energy resources remained under-explored owing to a variety of reasons including low commodity prices, lack of investment, poor infrastructure, geographical obstacles and political instability. Over the past decade the surge in demand for mineral fuels driven by fast growing emerging economies and the concomitant gradual stabilisation of the continent prompted a renewed interest in Africa's vast untapped resources. Investment is pouring in from all directions helping to uncover the real scale of Africa's energy reserves. Traditional oil producers in the Gulf of Guinea (from Nigeria to Angola) have been joined in recent years by a handful of new producers, namely, Ghana, Niger, Chad, Uganda with few more in the making (Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, Etc.). To complete this picture massive natural gas reservoirs have been discovered off the Eastern coast of Africa as well as vast coal deposits in Mozambique and large uranium reserves in Namibia and Niger.

These new developments have been in a great deal propelled by new streams of investment originating from emerging countries. The newcomers are now fiercely competing for assets not only with long established western companies but among themselves.

This paper proposes to compare Brazilian and Chinese engagement in Africa's energy sector. It aims at analysing the similarities and differences regarding their motivations, policies, strategies and implementing agents.