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This article analyzes the Beninese public policy on HIV/AIDS which has been framed by the “project cycle management”, a concept understood here as a public policy tool. A main consequence has been the political neutralization and “domestication” of associative actors. Through this process, socially and culturally privileged actors have been recognized as public policy partners. Thus, project cycle management can be seen as a principle of social discrimination, within which each actor has been trying to make their own the rules of the game. Finally, resources accumulated by the most legitimate actors in the framework of the public policy have been reinvested in local power plays, resulting in the sociological reconfiguration of the Beninese state.