‘Adieu les Artistes: Here Come the Managers’

Abstract

‘DG8 went through successive phases: first, there was the time of the engineers and the colonial officials. Ferrandi largely left his mark on the procedures concerning the implementation of the projects. His management of the EDF was very colonial, totally pragmatic. He came from a colonial background that made him very practical. He used to despise every sort of theoretical approach and was confident only in what he had in his hands. We used to build roads without really understanding in which way it could be useful for development. Changes could have occurred from the 1970s onwards, when the time of the economists came, along with their cost—benefit analysis, but because of the superficial way in which their analyses were conducted, it was in fact pure fabrication. The 1980s was the time of the sociologists, who favoured small rural projects adapted to the local reality. Suddenly, everybody saw themselves as sociologists. However, the function of sociologists is to analyse reality, not to change it, while development is about changing societies. Hence, the time of the sociologists within DG8 came to an end. At that time, I thought that the engineers would come back, but instead the sociologists were replaced by managers and accounting officers. Their goal was not to implement aid but to gain power by demonstrating that EDF projects were badly run by DG8. It was the worst period.