This thesis analyses whether and how Brazil-Mozambique South-South cooperation (SSC) re-politicized or de-politicized development. Re-politicization involves the recognition of the contingency of development. In other words, the recognition that development can be articulated in different ways other than the technical and economistic recipe inherited from the North and the hierarchy between developed/ underdeveloped that this construction presupposes. At the official level, Brazilian SSC became a signifier linked with elements that both articulate different ways of engaging with development, challenging the hegemony of the North, and with elements that preserve the status quo of the international order. The politics of cooperation on the ground is also characterized by contradictions and ambivalences. I analyse two case studies, the agricultural large-scale project called ProSavannah, and the construction of an anti-retroviral (ARV) factory, both based on the Brazilian experience in agriculture and health. In the context of antagonism and conflict that unfolded with the implementation of these projects in Mozambique, the response of the various stakeholders (Brazilian implementing agencies, Mozambican Ministries and research institutes, civil society actors) to the contingency of development depended on their own domestic trajectory and alignment with SSC principles. Simply put, the ProSavannah reproduced a hegemonic model of development, but found a counter-hegemonic civil society on the ground. I analyse the strategies each actor applied to either re-politicize or de-politicize development. The ARV factory, on the other hand, promoted the re-politicization of development by emphasizing the role of the state in health (as an arena for debate of health issues), but found in Mozambique a health sector highly shaped by the Northern hegemony. Like in the case of the ProSavannah, I analyse the political strategies each actor applied, which constituted the politics and anti-politics of SSC.