The International Production of Authoritative Knowledge

Abstract

As one might expect in this social science minded era, the formation of what passes as authoritative knowledge underpins all international development policy. At present, major parts of West Africa are turning into desert. This environmental circumstance is the rationale for international plans for managing West African political and economic affairs. The documents and official talk that surround this asymmetrical relationship reveal the donor view of the African situation, and what is considered `good for' West Africa, economically and politically, now and in the future. These European ideas about the way development should proceed, and the way they are inserted in the West African scene, are the subject of this article. Ethnographic observations of meetings of international donors, of life in African villages, and of the doings of African officials give substance to this picture of purported conformity and illfitting realities.