In order that “this country, so vital and so courageous, but so difficult and suffering, should be profoundly transformed”, an ambitious Five-Year Plan was to be launched, with the object of turning backward Algeria into an industrialised nation. 400,000 new jobs were to be created; 250,000 hectares of new land distributed to Muslim farmers; salaries and wages raised to a par with metropolitan France; and administrative posts made available to Muslims on a ratio of one to ten with those of the mother country; vast new horizons of schooling to be opened to Muslim children. In Paris Lacoste grumbled in disgruntlement that it all offered nothing new over his discarded loicadre; maybe, but the important difference was that the Constantine Plan had the name of de Gaulle, and all his newly acquired authority and weight, attached to it.

XREF: The Constantine Plan, named for de Gaulle's authority, parallels other colonial development initiatives like the Marshall Plan's political branding utility.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 937