“On a Mission” with Mutable Mobiles

The task of economic planning in the new nation of Nigeria in theearly 1960s tested the limits of economic technologies: its recipesfor development, its possibilities of measurement, and fromdifferences in political economy. These dimensions of the problembeset not only the Nigerian politicians and civil servants but anarray of international experts: each on their own mission to makethe new economy. This story of mutable mobiles is revealed in thedetailed diary entries of the economist Wolfgang Stolper - a man“on a mission”, for he was charged with making “the plan”. Thisfirst Nigerian economic plan was a mobile document that cycledaround a changing circle of civil servants and politicians and onlygathered powerful allies amongst them because of the mutability itselements. This mutability rested on a combination of decentralizedknowledge and on regional democratic preferences. And, to makea plan that would gain acceptance outside the centre of calculation,these local facts and choices had to be made consistent with eachother and with the projected future of the economy as a whole.This is where economic theory came in: it created a consistencybetween the current and future economy so that future facts -fictions - and current facts made good travelling companions foreach other in their circulations around the political and economiccommunity.[...]