This article analyses the evolution of the Portuguese State's discourses and policies regarding colonial development of Portuguese Africa, between the 1930s and 1974. Until the 1960s, the modernization effort of the Estado Novo regime in the colonies was centred in the improvement of the infrastructures. Portugal tried to develop in there an economy that would benefit the metropole and the white settlers, based on the economic exploitation of natural resources and natives forced labour. After the beginning of the colonial war (1961), the emphasis was put in the creation of multiracial societies, through a massive white settlement. Social development (education, public health, communitarian programmes, etc.) and the welfare of the African population would be a very late concern of the Portuguese Government (if compared to what happened in the English or French Empire). That change was determined by the international context, the recommendations of the international and inter-colonial technical and scientific cooperation bodies and some studies of Portuguese social scientists and agricultural experts.
colonial development; Portuguese late colonialism; Angola; Mozambique