France created the federation known as Afrique occidentale française (AOF, French West Africa) to coordinate colonial administration across several West African territories. This new structure concentrated power in a governor-general and made it easier to raise revenue and organize labor for state projects. It set the political framework in which corvée (compulsory unpaid labor) would later expand.
France applied the Code de l’indigénat in AOF, creating a separate legal regime for most Africans classed as “subjects,” not citizens. Colonial administrators gained broad powers of summary punishment and control, which supported labor coercion by penalizing refusal to work or comply with orders. This legal inequality became one of the main tools that sustained forced-labor practices.
AOF authorities formalized corvée obligations, requiring able-bodied men to provide a set number of days of labor for public works such as roads. Although framed as a civic duty, the system relied on coercion and punishments when quotas were not met. Formal rules also helped the administration standardize labor extraction across different colonies within AOF.
World War I increased the colonial state’s demands on people in AOF through taxation, conscription, and labor mobilization. These wartime pressures reinforced the idea that the administration could compel service for imperial needs, including work on infrastructure supporting military and export goals. The postwar period then carried many coercive practices into “peacetime” development programs.
After World War I, French planners pushed large irrigation schemes in the Niger River valley to expand intensive cotton cultivation for metropolitan industry. These plans tied “development” directly to export production and to the need for large, controllable workforces. The project became a major setting where forced recruitment and coercive settlement policies would later be used.
In the 1920s, West African activists in France, including Senegalese nationalist Lamine Senghor, helped build organizations that criticized colonial rule. Their writings and speeches connected economic exploitation to coercive systems such as forced labor and punitive administration. This activism did not end corvée, but it increased political pressure and visibility.
The International Labour Organization adopted the Forced Labour Convention (No. 29), defining forced labor as work exacted under the menace of penalty and not offered voluntarily. International standards strengthened criticism of colonial labor coercion, including corvée and forced recruitment for public works. France later ratified the convention, increasing the gap between official commitments and colonial practice.
Under growing criticism, AOF authorities shifted from direct corvée to a prestation system: a work tax that could be paid in money or satisfied through labor. In practice, many people who lacked cash still had to work, so coercion continued under a different administrative label. This change illustrates how colonial states often adapted forced-labor systems rather than ending them.
A French decree created the Office du Niger to develop the Niger valley through dams, canals, and irrigated agriculture. The scale of construction and settlement required large labor forces and strong administrative control over local populations and migrants. The project became closely associated with coercive labor practices and compulsory recruitment in French Sudan (today Mali).
Free French leaders and colonial officials met at Brazzaville during World War II and issued reform recommendations for the empire. Among these was a call to end forced labor, reflecting both wartime political needs and rising international and African demands for change. The conference did not grant independence, but it helped set the direction for postwar legal reforms.
The Lamine Guèye law proclaimed that people in France’s overseas territories had the status of citizens, not “subjects.” This change weakened the legal foundations of coercive colonial governance by challenging the political logic of separate rights. It did not instantly erase unequal power on the ground, but it reinforced the postwar shift away from the indigénat system tied to forced labor.
France passed the Houphouët-Boigny law to suppress forced labor in overseas territories, including French West Africa. The law targeted practices such as compulsory recruitment and unpaid labor obligations that had supported colonial public works and production schemes. Enforcement and local realities varied, but it marked a decisive legal break with colonial forced-labor policy.
Corvée labor and forced labor practices in colonial French West Africa (1895–1946)
