Short Abstract

Since Bandung, exchange between Brazil and Africa has flowed under the banner of South–South cooperation. This panel follows ideas and practices in both directions, asking how they are remade along the way—and whether cooperation delivers on its ideals or reproduces old asymmetries

Long Abstract

Africa and Brazil have long been linked by an intense exchange of ideas and practices. Brazilian pedagogies, artistic forms, agricultural schemes, religious currents, and development programmes have been taken up and reworked in African contexts—most influentially Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Conversely, African languages, religions, aesthetics, and people continue to shape Brazil, from the Yoruba presence in Bahia’s Candomblé to the more recent movement of African students and migrants. Since the 1955 Bandung Conference, much of this exchange has unfolded under the banner of South–South cooperation, with its promise of horizontal partnership, reciprocity, and solidarity among nations of the Global South.

This panel examines how ideas and practices are adapted as they circulate between Brazil and Africa, and what becomes of the ideals that South–South cooperation claims. Rather than treating models as fixed packages that simply diffuse, we ask how and by whom they are interpreted, contested, and remade. We welcome historical and contemporary case studies from across Africa and Brazil, addressing questions such as: Who adapts these ideas, from where, and with what authority? How do actors’ positions shape what crosses over and what is lost? Where do Northern actors, institutions, and concepts mediate ostensibly South–South exchanges? And when does cooperation realise its stated ideals, and when does it reproduce older asymmetries?

The panel is anchored in history but explicitly interdisciplinary, welcoming contributions from across the humanities and social sciences.

Propose paper