Information Aid and Forms of Belgian Post-Colonial Science

Abstract

In the events following the political decolonization of Belgian dependencies, institutes for colonial research and training were dissolved in the general higher education system. They were not incorporated in the trade and aid programs that constitute post colonial policy, nor did this happen to other scientific actors. In the absence of genuine Belgian institutes for post-colonial science, the organizational divide between training and research on the one hand, and trade and aid on the other, is bridged with programs whereby the higher education system communicates expertise to the South. The Belgian Administration for Development Cooperation (BADC) supports Southerners who study in Belgium and partly finances the organization of their training programs. BADC also helps dispatch metropolitan teachers and technical consultants to work at institutes in the South. The organizational configurations that have evolved in the course of the past three decades involve academic and quasi-academic actors who cooperate with the post-colonial policy system on a loosely defined basis, and constitute a new category of occupational and institutional entity. Their portrait is represented in the following study, which focuses on an exemplary training program in Management of Information on Science and Technology (MIST). My interest is in the analysis of how this new category represents the novel post-colonial relationship between Belgium and the South. What are its organizational characteristics, what are the goals it is aiming at, and are these goals achieved?