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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue
Title:An obscured revolution? USAID, the North Shaba Project, and the Zaïrian administration, 1976-1986
Author:Loffman, ReubenISNI
Year:2014
Periodical:Canadian Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0008-3968)
Volume:48
Issue:3
Pages:425-444
Language:English
Geographic terms:Congo (Democratic Republic of)
United States
Subjects:development cooperation
development projects
1970-1979
1980-1989
Abbreviation:USAID=United States Agency for International Development
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2014.943135
Abstract:This article examines a major instance of United States' (US) involvement in Zaïre during the 1970s and 1980s. The paper looks at an under-studied rural development scheme, known as the North Shaba Project/Projet du Nord Shaba (PNS), which was funded by USAID from 1976 to 1986.The PNS increased maize exports from northern Shaba (Katanga) to central and southern cities in the province and aimed to curtail workers' discontent by providing cheap food for them. Its quantitative successes and 'bottom-up' rhetoric led USAID officials to call the PNS an 'obscured revolution'. Unlike its colonial precedents and its post-colonial contemporaries, the project attempted to integrate village farmers' expertise in order to drive production and provide an opportunity to change existing patterns of 'top-down' development. Yet, although anthropologists facilitated some significant intercultural exchanges, the project did not wholly rely on local farming techniques. Instead, the PNS's major outcome was to briefly address the Zaïrian regime's neglect of agricultural production, thus helping it survive despite the financial pressures it was under during the 1970s and the 1980s. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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