1979
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Jacques Bugnicourt, « L’administration rurale en Afrique peut-elle devenir l’instrument d’un véritable développement ? », Revue française d'administration publique (documents), ID : 10.3406/rfap.1979.1104
Can rural administration in Africa become a tool for true development ? The African civil services in rural areas encounter a series of problems when focussing on developmental tasks since they tend to copy European models. Actual functions of civil servants in rural areas in terms of both administration and économie and social aspects, the shaping up of genuine “regal functions” on account of the enormous gap separating, in économie, cultural, and psychological terms, rural populations and the civil service, and, as a resuit, the difficulty of establishing a true dialogue between both worlds, the paucity of means earmarked for rural development, ail these explain the Administration's disfunctioning in the light of rural development. The only way to get out of this predicament would be to adopt a new strategy for rural development focussing on a restitution or dévolution of decision-making to the rural people and redefining the tasks of civil servants, whereby important changes would hâve to be introduced into the conditions of recruitment, training, and career development of the latter.