Visible and Invisible: Socialist Medical Aid to Mozambique and Angola

Angola and Mozambique became independent from Portugal in 1975, after a decade of guerrilla fighting. During the wars of independence, liberation movements created medical services for guerrilla fighters, refugees across borders and the population of the liberated zones. They counted on extensive networks of support from socialist countries, western progressive organisations, religious groups, and the international Red Cross. These groups supplied liberation movements with medicines and medical supplies, blood donations, sent medical professionals, trained health workers, and received patients for treatment. In the years following independence, the memory of health workers from western countries was made more visible in both countries and was celebrated through books and articles. Socialist aid, albeit present in local newspapers at the time, seems to have been forgotten, as local actors or the press ensured that it was less visible. This article will interrogate this paradox of sources and narratives around the medical aid provided to Angola and Mozambique before and after independence, and how this aid contributed to the establishment of health systems after independence. Drawing upon multi-sited archival research and oral history interviews, the article examines the diversity of support networks and interrogates the reasons behind the visibility and invisibility of health aid.