Triangulating a Modernization Experiment: The United States,France and the Making of the Kossou Project in Central Ivory Coast 1

Abstract

Triangulating a Modernization Experiment: The United States, France and the Making of the Kossou Project in Central Ivory Coast

This article attempts to analyse the complex history of the post-war modernization drives in Francophone Africa. It focuses on the damming of the Bandama River in central Ivory Coast. Adopting a transnational historical approach, I argue that the making of the Kossou damming experiment necessitated the importation of regional planning à la Tennessee Valley Administration, i.e., modernization in the style of the New Deal. While such US-inflected modernization approach informed the Bandama project, it was, mediated through the expertise of French development workers and social scientists – a process I call triangulation. Although short-lived, the Kossou experiment supports the claim that competing national interests between France and the United States provided (post)colonial societies in the Francophone world with a number of opportunities to rearticulate their visions of modernization and nation-building.