love, companionship, and bighearted encouragements, this book may have not seen the light of the day.
Many more people helped in other capacities: Julien Brou Kouamé provided timely technical support for the numerous illustrations that dot this work. Ibra Sene and especially Cheick Kaling helped with the research at the Archives Nationales du Sénégal. Monica van Beusekom, Jeanne M. Toungara, Phil Muelhenberg, Greg Mann, Joe Downing, Emelio Betances, Bill Bowman, and Larry Grubbs read various chapters and provided insightful comments. When the manuscript landed at the desk of Ohio University Press, Gill Berchowitz and Jean Allman received it enthusiastically. I thank them, together with the other editors of the New African Histories Series, for the confidence they placed in the project. My appreciation is also extended to the reviewers and copyeditor of the manuscript for helping me clarify murky points and thus improve my overall argument. Last but not least, I thank my cousin Moussa Bamba for hosting me whenever I was doing research in the Greater Washington, DC, area. Along the same line, I acknowledge the generosity of Sindou Soumahoro, Moussa Coulibaly, Marc Papé, and Bertin Kouadio. My final thank-you goes to my family in Ivory Coast: my mom, Mayantié Chérif; and my siblings, Massiami, Amara, Mouandou, Adama, and Yahya. I am indeed grateful to you for the constant support and timely prop-ups you provided so that the project could be finished and not turn out to be a dereke deni kan bah.
Selected Abbreviations
| ARSO | Autorité pour l’Aménagement de la Région du Sud-Ouest |
| AVB | Autorité pour l’Aménagement de la Vallée du Bandama |
| BRL | Compagnie (Nationale) du Bas-Rhône Languedoc |
| BSIE | Budget spécial d’investissement et d’équipement |
| CAISTAB | Caisse de Stabilisation et de Soutien des Prix des Productions Agricoles |
| CCCE | Caisse Centrale de Coopération Economique |
| CCFOM | Caisse Centrale de la France d’Outre-Mer |
| CENIS | Center for International Studies |
| CIDT | Compagnie Ivoirienne pour le Développement du Textile |
| CIRES | Centre Ivoirien de Recherche Economique et Sociale |
| CRED | Center for Research on Economic Development |
| D&R | Development and Resources Corporation |
| DATAR | Délégation pour l’Aménagement du Territoire et de l’Action Régionale |
| ECA | Economic Cooperation Administration |
| EDF | Electricité de France |
| ETV | educational television |
| Exim Bank | Export-Import Bank [of the United States] |
| FAC | Fonds d’Aide et de Coopération |
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization |
| FEANF | Fédération des Etudiants d’Afrique Noire en France |
| FIDES | Fonds d’Investissement pour le Développement Economique et Social |
| ICA | International Cooperation Agency |
| IFAN | Institut Français d’Afrique Noire |
| IMF | International Monetary Fund |
| INAC | Institut National d’Agronomie Tropicale |
| IRAT | Institut de Recherches Agronomiques Tropicales et des Cultures Vivrières |
| MSA | Mutual Security Agency |
| OHE | Office des Habitations Economiques |
| ORSTOM | Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer |
| PCF | Parti Communiste Français |
| PDCI | Parti Démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire |
| RDA | Rassemblement Démocratique Africain |
| SARA | Section Autonome de Recherche Agronomique |
| SCET | Société Centrale de l’Aménagement du Territoire |
| SEDES | Société d’Etudes pour le Développement Economique et Social |
| SIHCI | Société Immobilière d’Habitation de Côte d’Ivoire |
| SODEFEL | Société pour le Développement des Fruits et Légumes |
| SODERIZ | Société pour le Développement de la Riziculture |
| SODESUCRE | Société pour le Développement des Plantations de Canne à Sucre, l’Industrialisation et la Commercialisation du Sucre |
| SYNESCI | Syndicat National des Enseignants du Secondaire de Côte d’Ivoire |
| TVA | Tennessee Valley Authority |
| UNDP | United Nations Development Program |
| USAID | United States Agency for International Development |
Introduction
So before we encounter what was or was not modern we are left with an initial problem of specifying what it is or was that could at any point be regarded traditional. If that is defined, as it has been by some, as involving continuity, repetition and relative lack of choice, we would have to conclude that there had never [. . .] been such a moment or such a place in that extensive West African History for which we have anything like substantiated evidence. That which might appear to be traditional to an uninformed stranger was and is firstly subject to incessant change and it was also the product of generations of imaginative cultural bricoleurs.
—Richard Rathbone, “West Africa” (2002)
WHAT COULD BE MORE FITTING in opening a book on (post)colonial modernization in Africa than the reflections of Richard Rathbone, one of the doyens of African studies of our times? Rightly as the British Africanist puts it, there is a rather long tradition of people’s engagement with modernity in the history of West Africa.1 It would seem even more appropriate to flesh out such a claim in this introductory chapter and show, for instance, the many micropolitics of domestication of the modern in this part of the world that seemingly
