Mali's Office du Niger was conceived on a monumental scale to produce
cotton for the French textile industry after the First World War. Undaunted by the
conspicuous absence of both manpower and a viable crop, Émile Bélime, the
scheme's originator and presiding genius, believed colonial authorities could
compel people from all over French West Africa to settle there. Under pressure
from Paris, local administrators became his recruiting agents, forcibly resettling
some 30,000 Africans by 1945, when the colonial ministry privately declared the
scheme an unqualified failure. In 1960, France recycled the project as a prototype
of disinterested aid to a developing country.