Paper short abstract

The paper explores historical (dis) continuities in the political imaginaries and discourses of Brazilian development workers in Mozambique across time. This historical perspective sheds light into the politics of South-South cooperation between the two countries as lived by individual professionals.

Paper long abstract

The paper focuses on interactions between Brazilian and Mozambican development workers in two distinct moments in history - in the early 1980s soon after Mozambique's post-independence and in the early 2000s with the arrival of President Lula da Silva in power and the strengthening of Brazil's South-South cooperation policies towards Portuguese speaking Africa. Drawing on interviews with a life history approach with Brazilian development workers in Brazil and Mozambique, the paper investigates changes and continuities in the political imaginaries related to South-South cooperation and their personal and professional interactions with Mozambicans. Institutionally and historically locating individual trajectories provides a useful lens to understand some of the contradictions and ambiguities embedded in the politics of South-South cooperation.