In this book, Abou B. Bamba deals with a question that has been largely neglected by historians of development and specialists of Africa: the way that African states, in this case, Côte d'Ivoire, used the competition between foreign powers and firms, here the United States and France, to bargain for development projects. This book is singularly distinctive for the rigor with which it brings together and analyzes the role of such important actors as corporations and consultancy firms in constructing development policies. It moves beyond the Françafrique paradigm and what is typically understood to be a French postcolonial pré-carré, or a French-controlled preserve, to explore the influence and presence of American private firms, research organizations, and lending institutions (USAID, Exim Bank, Citibank). The resulting book, which is based on a rich variety of archives, is well documented and well written.
Taking as an example several development projects of the 1960s–1970s (most notably the Kossou dam and San Pedro project), Bamba shows how American models of development and modernization (like the Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA]) exerted long-lasting influence on the Ivorian political elite. Bamba also demonstrates convincingly how French expatriates themselves brokered these American models of development by translating them into them into French ideas and politics, a process to which he refers as ‘dubbing’. This analysis establishes that France mediated the export of American models of development to postcolonial francophone Africa.
At the same time, American involvement in Ivorian politics of development caused much tension with France. Bamba describes this state of relations between France and the United States as a ‘hot peace’ within the context of the Cold War. As development projects were used by American firms to extend their commercial influence in Africa, French corporations, research institutions, and government officials could not remain indifferent to what was perceived as an encroachment on their monopolistic and privileged positions. Last but not least, Bamba exposes the fragilities of the development strategy of President Houphouët Boigny, who pursued grandiose projects modeled on the TVA, because they relied mainly on foreign investors and models.
Eventually, the Ivorian miracle turned into a mirage. Houphouët Boigny presented his development initiatives as a means to build the nation and achieve prosperity, but in the end they increased rather than alleviated regional disparities and poverty. Creeping corruption and inefficient management of the projects led to a situation where only a handful of officials, close to power, benefited from Houphouët Boignys's modernization experiments. That distortion, along with their often disastrous effects on the environment and on local populations, helps to explain why such projects provoked much resistance within Ivorian society and eventually failed. This process is illuminated very well in Chapter Seven, where Bamba describes the criticisms of a new generation of Ivorian intellectuals: as Côte d'Ivoire's model of development and modernization proved more and more problematic in the late 1970s, those detractors couched their criticism in the language of human rights and socioeconomic justice, precisely the sort of guarantees and protections that the Ivorian state had failed to provide. On this particular point, one may wonder what role nascent non-governmental organizations played in challenging the development strategy of the Ivorian government.
As far as the failure of these development strategies is concerned, some lingering questions remain. One wonders how American models of development transferred to the Ivorian state. How did the complex TVA bureaucratic system of planning fare in Côte d'Ivoire, which was a neo-patrimonial state plagued with clientelistic practice and corruption, in which bureaucratic control was extremely difficult to achieve? There is also the issue of possible resistance to this system by former colonial officials who served in the postcolonial administration of Côte d'Ivoire: being former political officers trained at the colonial school, many harbored an anti-technocratic vision of development, which may have been incompatible with the modernization model entailed by the TVA model. These issues are less limitations of the book than topics that the author might further consider. Indeed, Bamba's research is the foundation of an outstanding and significant book, which will be of interest to historians and political scientists who focus on Africa, development, and corporations.
