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Mozambique's development record has been hailed by the aid community as one of the continent's few successful stories, while Guinea-Bissau remains inextricably linked to the label of failure. The two countries are understood to represent the epitome of what is ultimately right and wrong with Africa. Praise and blame, optimism and pessimism, tolerance with deviations from the prescribed model or pure abandonment - these contrasting attitudes have characterised the western aid community's discourse regarding the two states for the past two decades. And yet, Mozambique and Guinea- Bissau have maintained a rather close position in the aid community's post-Cold War most celebrated measurements of human development and poverty reduction. Indeed, the narratives attached to both states do not seem to be driven by the donor community's own professed measurement of human development insofar as indicators do not bear a clear relation with how the states are internationally perceived. What then drives the aid community's labelling of a recipient country's development trajectory as a success or a failure and what are the implications of those labels? Adding to the existing literature accounting for the geopolitical and neoliberal explanations, this article uses a poststructuralist approach concerned with disclosing how discursively and relationally shaped identities come into play in the development aid encounter. It discusses the reasons behind the labels of success and failure as well as how they came about and have been hitherto sustained. The article argues the process of labelling creates, and temporarily freezes, subject positions within the aid system, deeply embedded in institutional and personal donor-recipient relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]