Colonization to co‐operation? French technical assistance in Senegal

Summary

Too often manpower aid planners treat the input of expert personnel and their knowledge as if it would have a reasonably calculable output and positive effect on development, however vaguely defined. This article suggests the limitations of such an approach by examining the French programme in Senegal, which in 1971 included more than 1,200 technical assistants in education and the administration. It concentrates chiefly on technical assistants serving as advisors in the administration where their impact lies above all in the continuation of structures and attitudes derived from the colonial period and afterwards. It examines the ambiguity of the role of the technical assistant in the context of local organization, emphasizing the importance which his authority and experience assume while working within an inefficient administrative structure. Tracing the consequences of this, it is possible to discern the elements of an expatriate ‘administration within an administration’.

While such a phenomenon may not be so obvious elsewhere, it seems pertinent to take a critical look at technical assistance activity in the context of ever expanding unemployment and inefficient bureaucratic structures in Africa, and possibly elsewhere.

Notes

The author is a Fellow of The Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. An earlier draft of this paper was. presented to a Staff Seminar at the Institute in February 1970, and circulated in their communications series as ‘The Limits of French Technical Assistance in Senegal’.