Colonisation planifiée des rives du Lac de Kossou en Côte-d'Ivoire Centrale : la genèse d'un échec

The reservoir dam on the great Ivory river built for hydro-electric production created an artificial lake which drove 75 000 peasants from their land. The government instituted a public agency in charge of resettling this population on the banks of the new lake. The village production factors were restored through a vast and costly land clearing where annual rainwater-fed crops were to be cultivated. The farming was highly mechanized with crop rotation and associated with cattle breeding. This scheme was largely supported by international financing organizations. The peasants however continued to favor traditional crops cultivated marginally and at the expense of the new cropping system considered as tiresome, compelling and scarcely profitable. This scheme gradually collapsed, abandoned by the disillusioned peasants. For financial reasons, the public agency had to recover the land, production means and labour force of the stranded peasants. At the same time the agency decided to extend this production model to certain traditional communities hoping for better results. This overambi- tious project was drastically stopped in 1981, year of the dissolution of the agency.