The politics of hiding and experiences of decentering development in mangrove rice farming in Guinea-Bissau

Mangrove rice production in Guinea-Bissau relies on locally designed infrastructure (dikes, ditches, sluices) for managing fresh water and seawater level inside rice polders. The construction of this infrastructure is labour, time, and knowledge intensive and ever more challenging under climate change. We participated and documented processes of construction guided by efforts for decentering development in coastal Guinea-Bissau. Processes of collaboration and coproduction and procedures for engagement in open-ended projects remain poorly analysed in the literature. This paper discusses uses of concealment as ways of coping with procedural uncertainties in processes of collaboration. Concealment was unexpectedly used to avoid expectations created by the traditions of the aid industry and to cope with local redistributive pressures. Collaboration approaches leading to decentralised decision-making, decentralised management of funds, and coproduction of ethics are promising for understanding and overcoming persisting colonialities and power relations at interfaces of difference between researchers, NGOs, and farmers.