After World War II, the families of a group of people that had been in the French Resistance in Aubeville, France, moved to the valley to set up a communal farming project.
The new settlers were granted a concession of 5,500 hectares but encountered difficulties in their early years, including plant pests and diseases, droughts and occasionally hailstorms.
[2] Not long afterwards, research stations were set up by the French state which planted oil-palm plantations, built mills to extract the oil, mechanized the production of peanuts, experimented with growing Urena lobata, planted sugarcane and built a sugar refinery, mechanized rice production, and grew citrus, bananas and pineapples.
[2] In 1970 the agricultural assets and the sugar plantations were nationalised and became a state run organisation, Société Industrielle et Agricole du Niari.
By 1988, sugar plantations covered 22,000 hectares, but, after a few good years, the labour force had grown too large and productivity had fallen, so in 1991 the company was privatised once again under the name SARIS-Congo.