Africa-South America To Advance Cooperation

In what will be one of the largest gatherings of world leaders at any single two-day event, leaders of South America are expected to meet with their African counterparts at the first ever South America-Africa summit starting from November 30 in Abuja, Nigeria.

South American Community of Nations (SACN) has taken the lead in promoting dialogue with other developing regions, and last year it started this process by organizing the first South America-Arab League summit in Brasilia.

The antecedents of this major decision to hold a South America-Africa summit were the efforts undertaken to enhance South-South cooperation through joint events such as the First Conference of Intellectuals of Africa and the Diaspora which took place in Dakar, Senegal in October 2004 and the follow up Second Conference in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil during July this year.

According to reports, some of the South American countries have already begun analyzing the possibility of setting up a development “Bank of the South” for financing their infrastructure projects.