Fonds d'Investissements pour le Developpement Economique et Social

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (July 2007)

FIDES was the French infrastructure that delivered aid to its colonies, particularly in Africa. It was widely criticized for having failed in many development programs. Rene Dumont (1962) writes of FIDES that "Within the framework of FIDES very large sums were granted to French-speaking Africa. In face of the immense needs, however, they seemed quite modest. The aid could in fact have been increased many times without a corresponding tax pressure, had France had the courage politically to decolonize more rapidly. Forty-six percent of the FIDES grants, particularly in the first four-year plan, were used to build roads, ports and airports. These were indispensable to open up the countries, but could have been achieved at less cost." (46)

Dumont, Rene, 1969. False Start in Africa. Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers. New York