Paper short abstract:

To understand the role of Malagasy experts in the “anti-politic machine” as well as the position of aid in their professional trajectories, I propose to focus on aid tools (technical assistance, consultancy contracts…) and the practices of production, power and identification involved.

Paper long abstract:

Which role do African experts play in the aid machine and in the international government of Africa? Reversely which role plays foreign aid in careers of African administrative and political elites?

To address that, I will use results from my PhD research in which I describe the formation of the professional world of Malagasy decentralization policy, given that this "national" policy is largely co-produced by the foreign "partners" of Malagasy government. My paper will focus on the Malagasy part of this world of civil servants inside ministries, employees of aid agencies and independent consultants.

To achieve that, I will use individual trajectories as well as analysis of aid tools (technical assistance, consultancy contract…), and ethnography of consultancy contract as well as sociological and discursive inquiry based on texts commanded or produced by foreign aid agencies or Malagasy ministries.

Paying attention to the practices of aid production, to the aid tools and their political equipment enables us to scrutinize practices of power and identification at stake in the interactions between foreign and "local" experts. Among these practices, knowledge and information processes (inquiries, reports…) in aid production lead to struggles about labor division through which foreign and Malagasy experts define their professional and social identities.

Besides, taking seriously social actors' goals and justifications prevents us from simplistic analysis of strategic behavior and domination relationships. Thus, it forces us to reconsider the cause-and-effect relation between commercial goals, career strategies, impoverishment and depoliticization of analysis and practices, conflict and critics avoidance.