Abstract
In their extra-regional outreach Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa rarely make each other a priority. However, since the end of the Cold War there has been an increasing amount of political efforts to strengthen ties on a region-to-region basis. This chapter argues that this rapprochement has been facilitated by the emergence of two regional projects following a similar logic in a post-Cold War context, in particular the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market of the Southern Cone. At the same time, both projects face serious limitations of actorness that are illustrative of the confined space for interregionalism across the South Atlantic. An analysis of the formalised initiatives on political, economic and trade issues between the two regions concludes that these are characterised by transregional and partly pure forms of interregionalism and that most initiatives are heavily shaped by the leading role of Brazil.
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Notes
- 1.
See http://www.mercosur.int/innovaportal/v/762/1/secretaria/acceso_autoridades_gestor (retrieved on 07.01.2015) for a complete overview.
- 2.
External funding still represented over 50% of the SADC budget in 2009/10 (SADC 2009).
- 3.
Cf. http://es.socialmercosul.org/cupula-social/ (retrieved on 02.02.2015).
- 4.
Aggarwal and Fogarty (2004) also point to transnational production networks and the transnational activities of non-governmental organisations and civil society actors in that context.
- 5.
The Community of Portuguese Language Countries also falls in this category but due to Brazil being the only South American member and not representing its region within this organisation, it will not be covered in this paper.
- 6.
A similar initiative has been launched in 2005 by Brazil to bring together South American and Arab States under the Spanish acronym ASPA (South America-Arab States Summit), cf. Ayuso et al. in this volume.
- 7.
Cf. http://asasummit.itamaraty.gov.br/asa-ingles/summit-of-south-american-africa (retrieved on 18.04.2015).
- 8.
Cf. http://www.au.int/en/asa (retrieved on 18.04.2015).
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Mattheis, F. (2018). Volatile Interregionalism: The Case of South Atlantic Relations. In: Mattheis, F., Litsegård, A. (eds) Interregionalism across the Atlantic Space. United Nations University Series on Regionalism, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62908-7_3
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