Paper short abstract:

This contribution investigates the involvement of expatriates self-identifying as socialists, operating outside the machinery of state socialism, in the development agendas and projects that marked the political transitions in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau in the 1970s and 1980s.

Paper long abstract:

Political, economic and social transitions from empire to nation-state were hugely shaped by debates around development. African postcolonial elites were not alone in addressing these issues, but benefited from the exchanges and experience of a wide range of international actors. Some of these actors played a key role in shaping transitions on the ground, through specific rural development projects, educational and health programs, etc. Cooperation agreements between African and socialist countries were one of the channels that enabled the East-South circulation of experts (Burton 2021; Pieporka 2020) but there were other routes of mobility, usually less formal or without state backing, through which actors who identified themselves as socialist or communist moved – West-South and South-South– to contribute to the transition and ensuing nation-building plans.

This paper aims to offer a first exploration of the role that the development experts, academics and workers that moved southwards outside bilateral/state mobility frameworks played in diverse subfields connected to 1970s and 1980s/90s transitions. Drawing on concrete examples of individuals engaged in the development sector in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, this contribution broadens the scope of socialist mobilities and exchanges beyond the conventional East-South axis. This provides room to analyse critiques, tensions and alternative visions of politically or ideologically-driven circulations and the impact that a plurality of socialisms had in African decolonial transitions.