Remarks by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Brazil-South Africa Business Forum during the State Visit to Brazil, Brasilia, Brazil

Your Excellency, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
Distinguished Ministers, Ambassadors and Members of Delegations,
Leaders of Business,
Ladies and Gentlemen.,
 
It is a great honour for to be with you today in Brasilia.
 
Brazil and South Africa are much alike. 
 
We are large, complex and diverse democracies. We are resource-rich and full of talent. 
 
We carry the weight of significant inequality and we both carry the ambition to overcome it. 
 
We are members of BRICS, partners in IBSA, advocates together within the G20 and at the WTO.
 
We have consistently championed the view that the rules governing global trade and investment must be made more fair, more inclusive and more responsive to the realities of the Global South.
 
This visit presents us with an opportunity to re-imagine a world of opportunities anchored by our shared values and vision. 
 
As Team South Africa, we are keen to rebalance our trade by growing and diversifying South African exports to Brazil.
 
Both countries have an interest in improving market access and product coverage through the MERCOSUR-SACU Preferential Trade Agreement.
 
Among other things, we need to work on reducing trade friction by strengthening cooperation on trade remedies and resolving non-tariff constraints affecting priority products.
 
There is huge scope for advancing industrial cooperation in identified high-impact sectors.
 
These sectors include biofuels, defence, agro-processing, aerospace, energy, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing and automotive.
 
These cooperation should include technology transfer and skills development.
 
We want to position South Africa as Brazil’s gateway into African markets under the African Continental Free Trade Area, and to position Brazil as South Africa’s gateway into Latin America.
 
Many South African companies have operations in Brazil. These include companies like Sasol, MTN, Naspers, FNB, Aspen Holdings, Grindrod, Standard Bank, AngloGold Ashanti and others. 
 
Brazilian companies such as Petrobras, Embraer, Marcopolo SA have operations in South Africa. 
 
We welcome the establishment by Embraer of an aviation training academy at OR Tambo International Airport, building South African aerospace talent and embedding our country in a global aviation value chain. 
 
Marcopolo has invested in automotive manufacturing in the Gauteng province, contributing assembly capacity and workforce development. 
 
The Brazilian industrial engineering group WEG has built a manufacturing and distribution presence that serves South Africa’s mining, energy and water sectors. 
 
The foundation for greater trade and investment is in place.
 
Within BRICS, we have both championed development-oriented reform of the international financial architecture. 
 
Within IBSA, we have demonstrated that South–South cooperation can deliver real outcomes in health, agriculture, science and education. 
 
In the G20, South Africa has built on the momentum of Brazil’s distinguished Presidency in 2024, advancing shared priorities of inclusive growth, climate finance and fairer trade rules.
 
We have the foundation of a preferential trade agreement, the MERCOSUR-SACU Preferential Trade Agreement, covering more than a thousand tariff lines. 
 
We see this agreement as a platform with much greater potential than has yet been realised.
 
We are eager to work with our Brazilian partners to expand its product coverage and increase its use within the business community. 
 
South Africa is open for business.
 
We both have the policies, infrastructure and financial and technical tools to make it happen. 
 
Our Industrial Development Corporation and the Export Credit Insurance Corporation of South Africa are in the room. 
 
They are available to support a joint financing fund instrument targeting large scale infrastructure projects in manufacturing, biofuel, transport and energy. 
 
Both countries have sound technical standards regulators and agencies. 
 
There is therefore good opportunity for technical exchanges in the field of standards, accreditation, specification and conformity assessments.
Agreements have been signed. Now is the time to accelerate implementation. 
 
To Brazilian executives who are considering where to deploy capital and build partnerships in the decade ahead, South Africa is not simply a market of 63 million people. 
 
South Africa is the gateway to a continent of 1.4 billion people, integrated through the African Continental Free Trade Area into a single market with a combined GDP approaching $4 trillion. 
 
Our main ports – Durban, Cape Town and Richards Bay – are among the busiest in the southern hemisphere. 
 
Our financial system is the most sophisticated on the African continent. 
 
Our logistics infrastructure, legal framework and depth of skilled human capital together provide a competitive advantage.
 
South Africa and Brazil are not simply trading partners. 
 
We are fellow architects of a more equitable international order. 
 
At a time when multilateralism faces real pressure, when the rules governing international trade are in flux, when the voices of the Global South risk being marginalised, our partnership carries a greater significance.
 
Let our economic partnership be the living expression of that shared political purpose. 
 
When South Africa and Brazil trade more, when we invest in each other’s economies, when we build value chains that span the South Atlantic, we are not merely creating jobs and generating returns. 
 
We are demonstrating that the Global South can shape its own prosperity.
 
I am here today with a business delegation representing South Africa’s most capable export and investment-ready companies across aerospace, mining, chemicals, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, energy, defence and advanced manufacturing. 
 
They have made this journey not as observers, but as partners ready to build.
 
As I look around this room at the companies, the entrepreneurs, the investors and the decision-makers who have made the journey to be here I see something powerful. 
 
I see two nations choosing partnership over isolation. Cooperation over competition.
 
In closing, I invite you all to join us at the South Africa Investment Conference in Johannesburg on the 31st of March 2026, not simply as guests, but as partners in building a future of shared prosperity between our nations. 
 
The door to South Africa is open. And the time to invest and grow together is now.
 
I thank you.