L’émergence d’un gouvernement humanitaire de la pauvreté nutritionnelle en Afrique de l’Ouest

Abstract

This article describes the role of quantification in the emergence of a humanitarian government of nutritional poverty through dairy products in West Africa between 1930 and 1980. In a first phase, it analyses the progressive structuring during the interwar period of a nutritional knowledge, associated with reform intentions. In a second phase, it focuses on distribution conditions of dairy products in the colonies of French West Africa. It shows that the quantification of food needs for indigenous people became the subject of a struggle between the colonial power and the international institutions between 1930 and 1950, restraining the establishment of a universal vision concerning hunger in the world. In a third phase, it examines the role of nutritional quantification in the management of food aid programs set up by international organisations and EEC concerning dairy products between 1950 and 1980. It analyses the reasons why its influence on the way dairy products were handled was limited to populations that were affected by a war or a drought, leaving the question of chronic malnutrition significantly unresolved.

Keywords

• quantification
• government
• West Africa
• colonial relations
• food supply
• dairy product