According to the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ANBA), Daniel Schnorr a consultant at the Brazilian Association of Shoe and Leather Components Industries (Assintecal) for the African continent will travel to Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan at the end of February and beginning of March in order to look for new business opportunities for Brazilian companies involved in the leather and footwear sectors. He has already scheduled meetings at approximately ten companies and arranged visits to a footwear factory and a large tannery in Sudan which is said to process 6,000 sheep hides and 500 cattle hides per day. Both companies have already signaled that they are interested in importing Brazilian products.

Despite the geographical distance from these countries, Assintencal believes that Brazil has the products, knowledge and technology to compete with European producers and to win a significant market share in African markets. Brazilian producers of leather and shoe components have already found two new distributors, one in Alexandria and another in Cairo, Egypt, following the signing of a co-operation agreement between Assintencal and Egyptian companies in 2005—which provides incentives to boost the sales of Brazilian raw material in the domestic shoe and leather industry. The association also signed a similar agreement with Tunisia last year.