Main description

The year 2020 is a particularly important one for Vanuatu. On 30 July, this SID (Small Island developing state) celebrated the 40th anniversary of its independence. And in December 2020 is should be leaving the list of the least developed countries in the world. We could say that at 40 years old, Vanuatu has reached adulthood, but its first ten years of life were critical for its development. Vanuatu’s first two development plans set up the foundations for economic and social viability in the face of constraints imposed by insularity. Forty years after independence, many elements of these development plans are still present in national policy. The objective of this article is to look back at the first decade of independence in terms of Vanuatu’s development policies, the rationale behind them, the hopes they raised and the constraints they encountered. Receptive to the concepts of the “Pacific Way” and “Melanesian renaissance”, the first government of Vanuatu decided to build an endogenous development model. But to implement it, it chose economic planning, exogenous to the region. Despite undeniable successes, this model of endogenous development came up against constraints imposed by insularity and the international economic context.