An early experiment in the reorganisation of agricultural production in the French Soudan (Mali), 1920–40

Water control has long appeared an attractive technological solution to risky farming i n zones dependent on rain-fed cropping systems, especially in semi-arid regions. From the early twentieth century, European technicians and administrators sought to develop irrigated agriculture in African colonies. In the French Soudan the earliest colonial waterworks date back to the 1920s, just outside Bamako, in the vicinity of Baguineda. From Baguineda the French went on to develop a much larger-scale irrigation project north of Segou known as the Office du Niger. This study uses archival documents to show that a new system of crop production was imposed on peasants by the colonial state. Using labour requisitions and in some cases forced resettlement, the colony introduced new crops and technology for rapid intensification, and in so doing organised a new agricultural system oriented primarily towards the market. The Baguineda project began as, and remained, an enclave, spatially distinct from the surrounding dryland grain and pulse cropping system oriented primarily towards lineage reproduction. In common with many subsequent introduced agricultural development projects in Africa, its lack of success was due in part to the conflicting interests of poor peasant workers and powerful foreign promoters.