Fortunes and Misfortunes of the CENADI in Bénin: How a National Documentation Center Disappeared

Abstract

Why did an important, well-supported plan for a national economic development statistics center in Bénin fail, ask the authors, and what broader lessons can we learn from this? Such statistics are the foundation of information policies supporting sustainable economic development and social welfare. As part of a larger African initiative, in 1982 such a center was established in Bénin, but over time it failed completely. The authors identify multiple exogenous and endogenous causes, some of which may have been avoidable. The fundamental lesson is that the technology employed came to be more valued than the information it was intended to produce.