L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

partners, ranking behind only the United States, China, and Argentina.
The primary partners in cooperation are the Lusophone countries
of the continent. In Angola, the Latin American giant is involved in
rebuilding of the war-damaged Capanda hydroelectric power plant,
in joint ventures with Angola’s state-owned companies in diamonds
and bio-fuels as well as commercial and residential real estate. Brazilian
company Oldebrecht is now the largest private sector employer
in Angola. Brasilia extended lines of credit totaling $580 million
in 2005. Additional credits were subsequently extended to totals
approaching $2 billion in conjunction with semi-public Petróleo
Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras) acquiring stakes in several offshore
blocks in joint venture with the state-owned Sonangol. 49
In Mozambique coal mining and agricultural projects are under
way. Brazilian banks expand their networks in Northern and Tropical
Africa. Brazil has written off a significant proportion of the African
countries’ debt.
Brasilia has also been a driving force behind a loose political alliance
of India, Brazil, and South Africa, formally called the “India-
Brazil-South Africa (IBSA).
Mirroring China’s process of ‘going out’ by encouraging the development
of internationally competitive companies, the Vietnamese
government is pushing companies to explore export markets in Africa.
State-owned PetroVietnam is one of Vietnam’s regular representatives
on the African continent. It operates in Algeria, Angola,
Egypt, Libya, Madagascar, Sudan and Tunisia. Vietnamese investment
is still a far way behind its Asian counterparts, but it is growing.
PetroVietnam is in talks with Morocco’s Office Cherifien des
Phosphates to set up a one-million-tonneper-year phosphate plant. In
South Africa, Truong Thanh Furniture Corporation announced in
July 2010, that it would invest $30m in a timber processing plant in
Umshwathi and 10,000 hectares of forest in KwaZulu-Natal. 50
So far China has been constantly ahead of any other competitor
from the South. It is difficult to predict with certainty what the current
monetary crisis would do to the China–Africa trade. The rate
of China's yuan has risen together with the U.S. dollar creating
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