Agricultural development in Belgian Congo has so far been understudied, especially in comparison to the French and British African empires. This project wants to use the case of scientific parastatal INEAC (Institut National pour l'Etude Agronomique du Congo belge) to shed light on how Belgian colonial policy and discourse around agricultural development was formed and changed.
INEAC operated in both a scientific and a colonial context: where and how these two contexts met and which consequences that had for development policy, will be an important focus of this research. As indicated in recent research, the project will focus on the relationship between discourse and practice of development policy, with several studies on French and British cases showing that the two are not always as intertwined as expected. A last focus will be the evolution from colonial to postcolonial and modern development policy, to find out how the colonial past has influenced what came after.