ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how planners in West African nations are caught between the donors and their own rural populations. It argues that these planners are not unwitting actors in a play written in Washington, Paris, or Riyadh but are themselves playwrights, although they lack sufficient internal resources to produce their work. Rivers and their drainage networks are natural energy systems for economic planning and development. The formation and implementation of river basin development has to overcome ecological, regional, and national differences. The Gambia River Development Organization (OMVG) is currently made up of four nations: The Gambia, Guinea-Conakry, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau. Space limitations preclude details about the rural history of The Gambia, Guinea, and Senegal and the various efforts by the state to increase rural production. The development framework within OMVG reflects the wider problem of the state’s inability to reorganize or “capture” the peasantry.
