[Tribune] Morocco-Brazil, a shared ambition for the Atlantic – Telquel.ma

Si through its Mediterranean facade, Morocco is firmly anchored to Europe, its Atlantic side gives it complete access to Africa and a window onto the American space… Our wish is that the Atlantic facade becomes a high place of communion human, a pole of economic integration, a center of continental and international influence”announced the king in November 2023.

With more than 3,000 kilometers on the Atlantic, Morocco has the most extensive maritime coastline in Africa and shares the same geographical advantage with Brazil, since the Brazilian coasts extend over more than 8,000 km.

In an equally convergent manner, Morocco and Brazil had, almost simultaneously in 2020, promoted within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, their respective sovereign rights over their territorial sea, their exclusive economic zone and their continental shelf.

The two countries, faithful to their well-known “multilateralist” vocation, aim, through the delimitation of their respective maritime spaces, to exercise, in a responsible manner, their attributes of sovereignty and jurisdiction, while optimizing these spaces. maritime areas as a place of connection and cooperation.

It is in the light of this shared maritime vocation that we could understand the Atlantic projection of each of the two countries. On the Brazilian side, this mainly concerns ZOPACAS (Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic), which the country launched in 1986 and which brings together 24 countries on both sides of the Atlantic.

For Morocco, the three most emblematic projects in this context are the port of Dakhla-Atlantique and the logistics corridor for the benefit of the four African countries of the Sahel (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad); the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, whose purpose is to connect the energy installations of 14 African countries bordering the Atlantic; as well as the PEAA (Atlantic African States Process) that Morocco launched in 2020 and which aims to stimulate the regional integration of 23 countries on the Atlantic coast of Africa, through three “baskets”: 1 ) security, 2) blue economy, maritime connectivity and energy, and 3) sustainable development.

All these initiatives converge and are intended to generate synergies and form complementarities, as long as they aim to make the South Atlantic a politically secure, economically integrated and sustainable space.

Certainly, the affirmation, on both sides of the Atlantic, of the irrefutable maritime vocation of Morocco and Brazil constitutes an additional lever to raise the Morocco-Brazil bilateral partnership towards a strategic level and optimize the intrinsic assets which make the singularity of this relationship, namely historical and human references dating back to the 19^e century, a multilateralist credo constantly advocated by the diplomacies of the two countries and constantly growing intersecting economic interests.

“Advantages” that Moroccan and Brazilian diplomacy have worked to highlight since the state visit made by His Majesty King Mohammed VI to Brazil in November 2004.

Since then, Morocco and Brazil have managed to build, under the double seal of trust and ambition, a solid and robust relationship, a multi-actor and multi-sector relationship, a relationship which has invested, with great success, in the niches of food security and air and maritime logistics.

Likewise, the maritime vocation of Morocco and Brazil will also capitalize on the bilateral legal framework, which has been greatly enriched in recent years, particularly for agreements and conventions relating to defense, security, non-double taxation, customs cooperation… It will boost bilateral technical cooperation, mainly in the sectors of renewable energies, green hydrogen and oceanography…

In short, it is a good omen to note that Morocco and Brazil fully converge on the fact that, to better understand the new concepts of nearshoring, blue economy and maritime sovereignty which are now essential in the geo-economy , the maritime dimension is, more than in the past, a necessary condition to establish the strategic projection of each of the two countries, whether at the regional or global level.

It is equally happy to note that the status of “global player” to which they so legitimately aspire, takes as a basic postulate the complementarity of their main asset: food security (fertilizers for Morocco and high agricultural productivity for Brazil). An ambition which also apprehends, and with the same interest, the competitive interweaving between land and sea, with interconnected multimodal corridors for Brazil and logistics processing platforms of international standard for Morocco (Tanger-Med and Dakhla- Atlantic).

This convergence of views between Morocco and Brazil resonates as a reminiscence of history, given that the first diplomatic contacts between Morocco and Brazil date back to 1860, following the rescue, off the coast of Tangier, by Moroccan sailors of the Brazilian boat “Donna Isabella”. From this episode was born a relationship of esteem and cordiality between the royal houses of the two countries, crowned a few years later by the opening of the first consular representation of Brazil in Tangier.

The unique history between Morocco and Brazil, initiated more than 150 years ago, will obviously write a new page, by fully investing in the Atlantic and optimizing its multiple assets and attractions, from blue economy to sustainable fishing, from oceanography to security coordination….

The looming horizon is that Morocco and Brazil are at the forefront of a new geopolitical articulation of the Atlantic and at the forefront of an innovative geoeconomic correlation between the two shores of this space with highly potential. promising.