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Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the development schemes involving oil palm in Dahomey/Bénin in the 1960s and 1970s, with a particular focus on the social outcomes originally envisioned by the plans and the real transformations they actually brought about.

Paper long abstract:

Oil palm development in newly-independent Dahomey foresaw the creation of standardized huge plantations along with high-capacity oil mills. The plantations were forcedly created by the state on a given perimeter, and run by so-called compulsory cooperatives, made of former landowners and of external workers. Not only did the cooperatives change the existing property regime and forms of labour, but also the peasants’ life and the landscape around them.

The first section of my paper accounts for the various prescriptions that Dahomean and European sociologists suggested, highlighting how they were similarly aimed at creating “new peasants”. The second one delves into the concrete social outcomes of the schemes. The social dimension of the projects (involving education and health) was only partially realized due to “donors’” resistance. Furthermore, apposite courses for women were launched, mostly aimed at getting them used to take care of their homes. Nonetheless, women themselves were able to influence the project, attending only the courses they preferred, such as those on agricultural production. Similarly, the cooperatives, although being aimed at contrasting certain dynamics of Dahomean rural context like farmers’ proletarianization, eventually reinforced them.

In the last section I will argue that the projects were abandoned in the late 1970s not because of what happened at the grassroots, but because Beninese palm oil exports could not be maintained without reducing the profits of the parastatal company running the cooperatives. The farmers adopted different strategies to abandon the cooperatives: life outside the future planned by development schemes was better.