A transnational company's involvement in public health, agricultural, and humanitarian policies in Europe and West Africa, 1920-1970

In the wake of the infant health scandal of the 1970s and of the 2008 world food crisis, scholars and activists have scrutinised the impacts of the corporate food sector on nutrition and health policies in the developing world. The coverage of these events, however, has tended to overshadow the longer-term, more nuanced history of relationships between the food industry on the one hand, and State agencies, humanitarian aid groups, and international organisations on the other. My thesis explores how and why, starting in inter-war Switzerland and France and continuing in the colonial and then postcolonial space of French West Africa, the multinational food company Nestlé engaged with public authorities in charge of food and health policies, with NGOs, and with technical and expert communities within specialised international agencies; and how these relationships contributed to shaping scientific research, public discourses, and programmes in the field of food, agriculture, and health.