Examining mutual resilience in South–South cooperation: the China-Tanzania educational partnership

This study examines how the China–Tanzania educational partnership builds mutual resilience, the capacity to sustain equitable collaboration amid disruptions. Through qualitative analysis of 22 interviews with stakeholders, this study develops a three-dimensional framework (absorptive, adaptive, transformative) grounded in Tanzania’s Ujamaa philosophy. Findings reveal that mutual resilience is constructed differentially across scales: at interpersonal and programmatic levels, historical trust and cultural respect enable bidirectional learning and institutional innovation; at the systemic level, however, resource asymmetries and mobility imbalances constrain fuller equity realization, particularly in transformative capacity. Theoretically, this study advances South–South cooperation scholarship by introducing mutual resilience as a culturally grounded analytical framework for assessing partnership equity across multiple dimensions. Practically, findings underscore the need for explicit equity mechanisms, collaborative funding models and epistemological co-creation to transform operational innovations into structural equity.