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.