African Military Labour and the Building of the Office du Niger Installations, 1925-1950

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Periodical article

Title:	African Military Labour and the Building of the Office du Niger Installations, 1925-1950
Authors:	Echenberg, Myron Filipovich, Jean
Year:	1986
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	27
Issue:	3
Pages:	533-551
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Mali
Subjects:	forced labour development projects development corporations Military, Defense and Arms colonialism History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Labor and Employment Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/181416
Abstract:	In 1926, the Governor-General of French West Africa was issued a decree allowing local administrations to use a portion of the annual military draft as labourers on public works programmes. The only administration to take full advantage of this decree was that of the French Soudan, where work had already begun of the first phase of the vast Niger irrigation scheme now known as the 'Office du Niger'. During the next twenty-five years, more than fifty thousand so-called 'second-portion' workers from Soudan were assigned to the Office du Niger for a period of three years' service. Ironically, this new system of forced labour allowed the colonial administration to construct a grandiose irrigation scheme that was destined to fail, chiefly because the sparsely populated colony could not supply enough labour to exploit the irrigated land. Notes, ref.