Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920-1960

In Negotiating Development, Monica van Beusekom proposes a simple, but all too often neglected, idea: Those who are interested in development must recognize the importance of the historical dimension of development efforts. As she states in her introduction, governments and nongovernmental organizations continue to invest in projects with the goal of assisting or "developing" poor countries, yet they repeatedly fail to examine the history of earlier proposals, particularly those of the colonial era. Van Beusekom illustrates her argument with the history of the Office du Niger in the French Sudan, an enormous project designed to transform the inland Niger delta region into a profitable cotton-growing region. Numerous scholars have explored the Office du Niger, though this is the first accessible study in English. Van Beusekom brings to this analysis not only her own scholarly work, but also personal experience working in Chad with Oxfam-Great Britain in the early 1990s.

From its earliest days, the Office du Niger was plagued by problems. Yet the more money the French government invested in it, the less anyone was willing to admit defeat. The Office, which officially began operation in 1932, was a stunning articulation of the French colonial goal of mise en valeur, or development. Africans farming the lands of the Office, it was claimed, would undergo economic, moral, and physical development. Yet African farmers had their own understandings about the work they did and the way they lived. Focusing on the contradictions between the ideology and the practice of development at the Office du Niger, van Beusekom's study shows that farmers' activities clearly forced project administrators to operate in ways counter to their original aims. Ultimately, administrators made some important adjustments, such as changing the goal of cotton production to one of rice production, or transforming their neomercantilist goals into a social welfare agenda. Van Beusekom argues convincingly that these changes emerged in response to African farmers' articulating and insisting upon their own views of development.

Stories about the settlers who farmed the Office du Niger lands (and who arrived at the Office almost always against their will) provide some of the most interesting and the most frustrating material in this study. One would like to know more about the social aspects of life in the Office communities. For example, it would have been valuable to see more on the interactions between settlers and other groups of people. While van Beusekom does examine the relationship between settlers and monitors, one is left wondering whether or not the settlers interacted with traders, soldiers, or people living in non-Office-controlled villages. Despite the policing of roads, it is evident that there was interaction at a level worth commenting on. For example, settlers on many occasions hired labor to help work on their farms. Van Beusekom notes the use of serviteurs who accompanied wealthier families, and she also distinguishes between settlers who were poorer or wealthier than others, but it would have been fascinating if she had explored these issues further.

Van Beusekom suggests that international agencies differ in their view of development as either a key to economic success or as a way to improve human rights, while always agreeing that development is a positive thing. This study does not claim that development is negative, but insists that any successful development project must take into account both history and local understandings of farming and technology. The author maintains that while many aspects of development projects were (and are) readily embraced by those in the "developing" world, this acceptance does not necessarily coincide with an acceptance of Western assumptions of cultural superiority. Through the story of the Office du Niger, van Beusekom shows how even if development projects are designed top down, they only work as a process of negotiation. Farmers and administrators at the Office du Niger struggled over both the meaning of development and the techniques that should be used to achieve it. This is an important case study for anyone interested in agricultural history, environmental history, or development history.