960,000 Hectares Were Earmarked for Cotton in the Niger Delta: Fifty Years Later, the Canals Were only Irrigating 6% of that Area, and Not as Much as Originally Planned.

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Launched in 1929 by the French colonial administration, the Niger Delta irrigation project in Mali promised to develop 960,000 hectares of land for cotton and rice. Fifty years later, only 60,000 hectares had been developed, and cotton, the project's raison d'être, had already disappeared by 1970.