“Win-win” agricultural investment projects put to the test: the case of the IDSP project as promoted by the World Bank in Zambia

For fear of being accused of land grabbing, investors, the governments of host countries and international donors have sought to develop jointly capitalist farming and family farming by seeking synergies from “win-win” projects. The Irrigation Development Support Project (IDSP), established under the supervision of the Zambian government and financed by the World Bank, constitutes one of the prototypes of this new generation of projects. The aim of this article is to examine the conception and implementation of this project and to question its likely impact. By relying on the professional experience of one of the authors of this article on three of the sites of the project, on the critical reading of the project’s documents put at our disposal and, finally, on qualitative surveys carried out in 2017, 2018 and 2019, we highlight the contradictions inherent to the project, implementation difficulties and the foreseeable impact of the project on family farming, as well as in terms of national benefit.