Cash Transfers in Niger: the Manna, the Norms and the Suspicions

Cash transfers (CT) are a particularly fascinating case for the social anthropology of development and, more generally, for research on development, for three reasons: (a) because they are going through a period of considerable expansion, both in the intermediary countries and in the poorest countries, and are the latest „fashion‟ in the world of humanitarian action, social action and development; (b) because they are going through a period of implementation on a vast scale in Niger, which has provided us with an exceptional situation for natural experimentation and for monitoring the implementation of an innovative method of intervention; (c) because the peculiarities of the CT system (the distribution of a new „product‟ by importing a system of new norms: see below), despite the undeniable benefits, concentrate or exacerbate the main ambiguities, contradictions, difficulties and inappropriateness of current interventions by development agencies (regardless of the good intentions of their staff and the positive outcomes achieved) when they are set against the many local rationales at various levels.