ABSTRACT
The most obvious characteristic of our colonial administration is the instability at every stage of both men and matters. Before examining the achievements and failures of the French administration in West Africa it may be appropriate to suggest the main causes to which the state of afiairs described by Cosnier can be attributed. The economic development of the country, apart from the intensive capital programme of the first decade, lacked foresight. The external capital necessary to stimulate production on the scale anticipated by the advocates of colonial rule was forthcoming neither from the administration nor from the commercial houses, whose main aim seems to have been the maximum return for the least input, even if this would reduce long-run profits by exhausting the resources on which these depended. The Council of Government had a deliberative role only and did not legislate for the Federation.
