This article introduces an Africa-focused special issue showing that the rise of development in its modern form coincided with the demise of the political legitimacy of forced labor. It argues that by mobilizing the idea of development, both colonial and independent African governments were able to continue recruiting unpaid (or underpaid) labor—relabeled as “voluntary participation,” “self-help,” or “human investment” —after the passing of the ILO’s Forced Labor Convention. This introduction consists of two parts: the first section summarizes the main findings of the contributions to the special issue. The second part advances preliminary considerations on the implications of these findings for our assessment of international development “aid.” The conclusion advocates that research on planned development focus not on developers-beneficiaries, but rather on employers-employees. Doing so opens up a renewed research agenda on the consequences of “aid” both for development workers (those formally employed by one of the many development institutions) and for so-called beneficiaries (those whose participation in development is represented as conducive to their own good).

中文翻译：

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“发展”的作用是什么

本文介绍了一个针对非洲的特殊问题，表明以现代形式发展的兴起与强迫劳动的政治合法性的消亡是同时发生的。它认为，通过动员发展思想，殖民地政府和独立的非洲政府都能够在通过之后继续招募无偿（或低薪）劳动力，这些劳动力被重新标记为“自愿参与”，“自助”或“人力投资”。国际劳工组织的《强迫劳动公约》。引言包括两个部分：第一部分概述对特殊问题所做贡献的主要发现。第二部分对这些发现对我们评估国际发展“援助”的意义进行了初步思考。该结论主张，对计划开发的研究不应侧重于开发者和受益者，而是用人单位。这样做就“援助”对发展工作者（那些被许多发展机构之一正式雇用的人）和所谓的受益人（代表其参与发展对自己有利）的后果开辟了新的研究议程。好）。