Re-Thinking Recipient Agency in South-South Cooperation: Strategies of Contestation, Strategies of Transformation and the South’s Own View of Development

Emerging donors have paid little attention to recipient agency in South-South Cooperation (SSC), instead emphasizing the supposedly horizontal character of South-South relations and the respect for (governmental) sovereignty. Focusing on the ProSavana, the Brazil-Japan-Mozambique large-scale agricultural project that was supposed to transform the Mozambican savannah into a commodities exporter, this article explores the political battle between the proponents of the ProSavana and the transnational movement of peasants that contested it. Drawing on the theory of discourse, the article offers a reconceptualization of agency in SSC as the capacity and ability (of indigenous populations) to transform Northern hegemonic discourses (embodied by the ProSavana) and replace them with the South’s own view of development. Based on similarity claims between Brazil and Mozambique’s experience with agricultural development, the peasants’ movement was successful in contesting the project by discursively linking ‘ProSavana’ with ‘land grabbing’ and ‘food insecurity’ but was not able to promote a more propositional discourse that would replace the ProSavana. My analysis shows that successful strategies of transformation will depend on the mobilization of discursive resources that resonate with the greater community as a ‘common good’. The article draws broader implications for movements that seek to contest large-scale (agricultural) projects.