This chapter examines debates around state planning in Morocco and Tunisia, centering on the idea that the post-colonial state could engineer a great leap in the 1960s. Socialist leaders Mehdi Ben Barka and Ahmed Ben Salah pursued ambitious development plans—agrarian reform and industrialization— intended to “catch up” their so-called delay. These policies, however, were deeply entangled with French colonial knowledge and development experts, most notably on how they conceived of tradition as an obstacle for progress. This chapter explores these plans’ entanglements in the imaginations of international experts during development conferences in Paris and Algiers. In both cases, these socialist leaders placed their attentions on the social resistance of peasants and downplayed reactions from educated youth in the cities. By the mid to late 1960s, students protests raged in Casablanca and Tunis, revealing a generational rupture and a challenge to the socialists’ visions of national development. This chapter also illustrates the benefits of excavating printed traces. International conference proceedings reveal post-colonial entanglements with government policy documents such as the Tunisian and Moroccan development brochures of the 1960s. This connection highlights the shortcomings of post-colonial state power after independence.