Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the “social imaginaries” of Africa present in Brazilian South-South Cooperation in the fields of agriculture, social protection and HIV/AIDS in Mozambique, arguing that Brazil’s relationship with the African continent is marked by a radical uncertainty between identity and otherness.

Paper long abstract:

Brazil has a long and complex history of engagement with Africa. A relationship whose origins lie in Portuguese colonialism and the slave trade had by the second half of the 20th century become a cultural and diplomatic love-affair, in which Brazil's purported "racial democracy" and ability to overcome its colonial past made it a natural ally for newly-independent African states. The first decade of the 21st century saw a massive expansion of the Brazilian presence on the continent, both diplomatic and commercial. This has been matched by an increase in the scale and ambition of Brazil's "South-South Cooperation" programme, which now includes agreements with 30 African countries. As ever more Brazilians - diplomats, doctors, crop scientists, civil society activists or mining engineers - arrive in Africa, they find themselves caught between complex local realities and the "social imaginaries" that imbue Brazilian popular and official discourses about the continent. These imaginaries are rooted in the contradictions of historical and contemporary Brazilian cultural and racial politics. In the specific field of South-South Cooperation, they are juxtaposed with "technical" understandings that construct all recipients of "development" as essentially identical. We explore the tensions of this juxtaposition through studies of Brazilian development cooperation engagements in three fields: agriculture, social protection and HIV/AIDS. In each field, we examine official discourses and those of Brazilian development practitioners in Mozambique. We argue that these discourses, and Brazilian cooperation practices in Africa more widely, are marked by a radical uncertainty between identity and otherness.