out, among other things, two modernization projects that crystallized the pervasive presence of American ideas in the Ivorian modernization drive. Part 3, “The Fate of Modernization” (chapters 6 and 7), brings the story to the 1970s when signs that the Ivorian model had been built on shaky ground became visible. It also places the last years of the Ivorian miracle in the global context of the oil shocks of the decade—a conjuncture that paved the way for the emergence of recession and subsequent structural-adjustment programs.
Chapter 1 focuses on the infrastructural development boom in postwar Ivory Coast. Tracking the logic of late colonial developmentalist efforts, I reveal the continuity between the policy of mise en valeur that was implemented in the interwar period and postwar modernization ideology. The chapter also uncovers the role of colonial agronomic research and, more importantly, the agency of African farmers in turning this once-backwater territory of French West Africa into a model colony that attracted investors beyond metropolitan France. Such conjuncture illuminates the interest of the United States in socioeconomic processes in Ivory Coast.
Chapter 2 is an examination of the ways in which French colonial administrators responded to the implicit critique that modernization theory raised against their rule in French Africa. In particular, I highlight the logics that informed the French policy of dubbing modernization discourse. Increasingly aware of the threat that the coming of the American Century posed to the maintenance of French rule in Ivory Coast and other parts of the outre-mer (overseas territories), French colonial authorities opted to translate American-inflected modernization concepts into the language of a rejuvenated mise en valeur of their “dependent” territories. Such a move was all the more clever since it secured the steady flow of American Marshall Plan funds into the French Empire while providing a timely answer to the politics of triangulation that some nationalist leaders had just begun to articulate. As it turned out, the reappropriation of modernization theory proved insufficient. In fact, most of France’s colonies, including Ivory Coast, gained their independence by the end of 1960.
Chapter 3 investigates how the coming of independence provided an opportunity to reframe development planning in Ivory Coast. I begin this chapter by looking at the dilemma faced by the Ivorian leadership in the field of human resources. Decolonization had meant for many nationalists just an Africanization of the staff that managed a largely Euro-American type of bureaucratic state in an African setting. But meeting the demand of filling vacancies led the Ivorian leaders to resort to international cooperation as a viable alternative to what some of them called “cut-rate” Africanization. Having proved themselves a reliable source of expertise, French researchers from the Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer came to dominate the design of Ivorian postcolonial modernization. Furthermore, they attempted to bring regional concerns—styled after the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—into Ivorian development planning. Rejecting a sectoral understanding of development, the Orstomians would reintroduce spatial analysis as a central parameter in any postcolonial nation-building effort undertaken by the Ivorian authorities.
In chapter 4, I examine the first large-scale postcolonial development project in which the United States was involved, namely, the construction of the Kossou Dam in Central Ivory Coast and the expansion of the Ivorian electricity grid. Looking at the inflow of both US financial capital through the Export-Import (Exim) Bank and American expertise through Kaiser Engineers, I demonstrate that the making of Kossou was a truly transatlantic process. This was all the more so since the ideology of integrated regional development that informed the Kossou operation had not only been (re)articulated in the American experiment in the valley of the Tennessee River, but had also transited through the region of Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. I also demonstrate that some of the architects of the Kossou project, including key French development experts, had been inspired by the projects of the TVA.
In chapter 5, I tackle another key postcolonial project directly affected by the United States: the dual incorporation of the Ivorian Southwest into the fold of modernity and the Ivorian nation. By examining the Ivorian activities of David E. Lilienthal, I underline the significance of the United States in the Ivorian leadership’s dreams of modernity. This is demonstrated through an examination of the consulting work of Lilienthal and his partners at Development and Resources Corporation. Through this work, Lilienthal became one key player in the scheme to develop the southwestern part of Ivory Coast. The chapter explains that such a role was all the more possible since the Ivorian authorities had initiated in the mid-1960s a policy of diversification that was informed by a TVA-like outlook on nation building. But the cost of an American-style modernization of the Southwest was not easy to shoulder. This reality eventually forced the Ivorians to fall back on French mediation, including the ever-needed expertise of ORSTOM’s social scientists. Even more, the modernization of the Ivorian Southwest revealed the all-important role of grassroots actors in rearticulating the elitist visions of postcolonial development.
The fate of the Ivorian modernization in the 1970s is the focus of chapter 6. Responding to the performative actions of various interest groups, including university students and school leavers, the authorities created numerous parastatals to employ job-hungry graduates who had appropriated the discourse of Ivorianization of the economy. At the same time, Houphouët-Boigny (commonly called Le Vieux) furthered the fight against the perceived regional disparity in the country. The launching of the sugar production estates and associated mills answered to both of these policies. Set in the northern savanna provinces of Ivory Coast—seen as the poor relation in the Ivorian growth and the “last frontier” of the Ivorian modernization drive—the program relied largely on foreign capital to reinvigorate the diversification of the Ivorian economy. The chapter brings into relief the key consequences of a high-modernist investment in the Greater North.
In the last chapter, I analyze the end of the boom years of the Ivorian economy in the late 1970s. In particular, I pay attention to some of the environmental consequences of the modernization drive of the previous decades. I then look at the ways in which both French and American diplomats and experts viewed the collapse of the economic miracle. The chapter equally explores the responses of the Ivorian authorities to the flagging economy, including their self-initiated internal structural-adjustment program. Finally, I resuscitate the voices of Left-leaning Ivorian intellectuals who, throughout the years of the boom, had cast doubts on the Ivorian model, arguing in the wake of economist Samir Amin that the Ivorian miracle produced “growth without development.”
The conclusion of African Miracle, African Mirage will suggest that the fate of the Ivorian development and modernization drive is best mapped out through a critical reading of local and translocal sources, as well as a keen engagement with the vicissitudes of a world system in transition between French (and European) colonialism, US neocolonialism, and (neoliberal) globalization. Ultimately, it is through a historical approach, which pays close attention to both local and transnational forces, that we may find the answer to the riddle of how a miracle becomes a mirage in an African postcolony.
PART I
The Postwar Years
1
Becoming an Attractive Colony
As to the Ivory Coast, it is without any doubt the richest, actually and potentially, of all
