The Political Economy of African Development. Ethnicity, Nation, and History

Project Information

ORDINARY

Grant agreement ID: 772854

DOI

10.3030/772854

Project closed

EC signature date 8 May 2018

Start date 1 August 2018

End date 31 January 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 555 679,00

EU contribution

€ 1 555 679,00

Coordinated by

LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ORDINARY (The Political Economy of African Development. Ethnicity, Nation, and History)

Reporting period: 2021-08-01 to 2023-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This proposal aims to examine the colonial origins of contemporary African inequality with a solid ethnic and religious component, emphasizing the role of private capital and concessionary companies that is unexplored. The proposal consists of three related projects, (i) educational dynamics and the intergenerational transmission of human capital across countries-regions, ethnic, and religious lines; (ii) the operations, functions, and practices of private concessions and the colonial administration during colonization and their legacy; and (iii) the relations of African ethnic groups with the colonial and the persistence of ethnic power post-independence.
Conclusions: Our work on educational mobility reveals considerable differences in the intergenerational transmission of education in most Sub-Saharan African countries. Educational gaps are the largest in relatively poorer countries and in regions with an initial low human capital stock, telling of poverty trap dynamics. Moreover, using a method that compares siblings whose families moved when they were at different ages, we uncover considerable spatial sorting but also sizable regional childhood exposure effects. However, while regions causally affect education for all religious groups, we observe a much lower propensity of internal migration for Muslims compared to Christians and Animists. The low likelihood of internal migration and upward educational mobility are extreme in highly segregated communities. And as Muslims reside in areas far from the capital, the coastline, and the main transportation network areas, their low internal migration rates cement the considerable educational gaps at the end of the colonial times. Analysis of well-being inside and outside the historical boundaries of concessionary companies that expropriated Africa’s riches during colonial times uncovers sizable heterogeneity (stream (b)). In some instances, we observe higher development outside the concessionary boundaries suggesting that in these cases, the brutal practices, forced labor, and extortion had lasting deleterious effects. However, in many other instances, education, public goods, and development are higher inside the old company boundaries, telling of the less malignant aspects of colonization related to infrastructure investments and school constructions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Educational Mobility in Africa: We provide new mappings of the dynamics of education and intergenerational transmission of human capital across regional, ethnic, and religious lines for many African countries.
Colonial Concessions and Contemporary African Development: We digitized hundreds of maps, delineating more than 1000 colonial concessions across over 35 contemporary African countries. We extracted information on the practices and operations of private capital in colonial Africa. Simultaneously, we collect, process, and digitize data on other colonial interventions.
For each country we will provide:
a. A detailed codebook recording all major concessionary companies, their operations (e.g. cotton or palm oil plantations, wild rubber, gold), and practices (e.g. forced labor, collaboration with indigenous community leaders), alongside granular geospatial maps.
b. A codebook of geospatial data on the organization of the colonies and protectorates, including administrative maps and investments, like railroads, schools, and clinics, prison labor, incidents of colonial violence and oppression, and military outposts.
c. We are drafting homogenized and with the same structure across all colonies reports reviewing the colonial experience, presenting the main regularities on the role of private concessions.
Under the third branch, we compile quantitative measures of ethnicities' status during the colonial period and then connect post-independence dynamics on ethnic political power to ethnicities' colonial experience to identify the nexus of political and economic power across the continent.
We compiled new data on ethnic colonial relations for more than fifty groups in seven countries. We have also initiated codifying ethnic relations in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Namibia.
We have presented our research in leading academic institutions (e.g. Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Northwestern) and conferences (e.g. National Bureau of Economic Research, Centre for Economic Policy Research).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project moves the frontier in research to African historical development and political economy. Our approach is highly inter-disciplinarily combining historical research, political science methods, and economics, based on state-of-the-art econometric techniques and theoretical modeling.
We aim to provide mappings of education's evolution and the intergenerational transmission of human capital across African countries, regions, ethnic, and religious lines. We are in the process of developing a dedicated website where researchers, media, and the public will visualize the main patterns and maps, download the data, and go over summaries and more technical material.
The project revolutionizes research on colonization and historical development. Taking a comprehensive approach, we record the operations and study the consequences of more than 1200 companies in 40 contemporary Sub-Saharan African countries.
Upon the project’s completion, we expect three comprehensive datasets covering most of Sub-Saharan Africa:
i. a dataset delineating the boundaries and codifying the practices (e.g. forced labor, road and railroad investments, oppression) and operations (e.g. gold or silver mining, palm oil, rubber, cotton, sisal) of (almost) all significant private concessions that operated in Sub-Sahara during colonization.
ii. an unprecedented number of historical maps and data on colonization, delineating (i) administrative boundaries, their capital, and other main cities; (ii) Christian missions; (iii) primary (and secondary) schools; (iv) primary clinics and hospitals; (v) and other data, like processing units, factories, police stations. We will provide exact sources alongside detailed narratives describing the practices of the colonial administration and concessionary companies (e.g. indirect rule, forced labor). Besides, we record colonial oppression at the yearly frequency using imprisonment data (by prison location and allegation) from colonial records.
iii. a homogenized report for all colonies reviewing the colonial experience, presenting the main regularities on the role of private concessions
In the third branch , the novelty we bring is the use of a multi-country and multi-facet approach to studying ethnic relationships with the colonial administration and other ethnic groups.
Upon the project’s completion, we expect:
i. To provide novel quantitative variables recording various aspects of the relationship between the colonial administration and ethnic groups for about 10-15 Sub-Saharan African countries. We will present digitized mappings of the spatial distribution of ethnic groups during colonization, as recorded by historical sources, colonial archives, and secondary research.
ii. A systematic analysis of ethnic power relations during colonization and connecting them to post-independence political and economic power. Thus, the research will allow tracing differences across ethnic lines on political and economic power to the colonial times, providing fresh large-scale quantitative evidence against an overwhelmingly case-study and narrative-based literature.