Significant changes happened in the field of international development with the turn of the millennium, particularly with the entrance of new actors who claim alternative cooperation modalities and models. The South-South Development cooperation (SSDC) providers assume that the shared experience between developing countries enables common policy solutions. Arguably, this affirmation authorizes the establishment of horizontal development partnerships. The relations between the agents in the field confine a set of positions, among them the donor position and the position of SSDC provider. The partnership comprises the position in which cooperation providers and beneficiaries overlap. Departing from the Brazilian development practices in the health sector, the research explores the Brazilian Health Expert Community (BHEC) and its structuring cooperation approach. The partnership position is articulated through the internationalization of knowledge and training of the health agents disseminating a coherent representation on how national healthcare systems should be structured. Nevertheless, the health partnership Brazil-Mozambique and the case of the ARV factory illustrate how the partnership and the principle of horizontality are challenged. Despite the role Brazilian experts and their institutions have in establishing a transnational community, once the Mozambican health experts occupy a different position than that of partner, the resulting socio-political space is not a one-way street of knowledge transfer. SSDC produces a space of strategic translations, in which agents compete for the meanings about health and the consequent development of policies in the sector.