DESTINED TO FAIL: FORCED SETTLEMENT AT THE OFFICE DU NIGER, 1926–45

Abstract

Mali's Office du Niger was conceived on a monumental scale to produce cotton for the French textile industry after the First World War. Undaunted by the conspicuous absence of both manpower and a viable crop, Émile Bélime, the scheme's originator and presiding genius, believed colonial authorities could compel people from all over French West Africa to settle there. Under pressure from Paris, local administrators became his recruiting agents, forcibly resettling some 30,000 Africans by 1945, when the colonial ministry privately declared the scheme an unqualified failure. In 1960, France recycled the project as a prototype of disinterested aid to a developing country.