The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa

Abstract

The predominant explanations on the deep roots of contemporary African development are centered around the influence of Europeans during the colonial period (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001Robinson , 2002Robinson , 2005, but also in the centuries before colonization when close to 20 million slaves were exported from Africa (Nunn 2008). Yet in the period between the ending of the slave trades and the beginning of the colonial rule, another major event took place that, according to the African historiography, had malicious long-lasting consequences. During the "Scramble for Africa," that starts with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and is completed by the turn of the twentieth century, Europeans partitioned Africa into spheres of influence, protectorates, and colonies. The borders were designed in European capitals at a time when Europeans had barely settled in Africa and had limited knowledge of local conditions. Despite their arbitrariness, boundaries outlived the colonial era.

The Value of Democracy: Evidence from Road Building in Kenya

“…We assume that political institutions are also relatively weak, and therefore the active support of one's coethnics is necessary to stay in power. 3 As in Padró i Miquel (2007), we assume that an acting president who receives the support of his ethnic group stays in power with probability _ γ . If instead coethnics refuse to support the policies of the president, such policies cannot be implemented and he is ousted from 2 We assume no tax discrimination for a number of reasons.…”

The Long-Term Effects of the Printing Press in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Because of this specification, the effects found can be lower than the real ones if the investments performed by the missions, and in particular the printing press, have a spillover effect across regions. If the effect of the printing press vanishes in the regions outside the threshold but is present in the regions considered, then our estimates might be downward biased because of spatial externalities (Miguel andKremer 2004, Michalopoulos andPapaioannou 2011). Table E1 in the online Appendix gives the results when the sample is not restricted.…”

Diversity and Conflict

“…It is well-accepted, for instance, that colonial legacies may have significantly shaped the political economy of interethnic cleavages in newly independent states (Posner, 2003). More generally, the heritage of colonial rule and the identity of the former colonizer may have important ramifications for the nature and stability of contemporary political institutions at the national level, thereby influencing the potential for conflict in society (see, e.g., Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 2013). We therefore condition our analysis in Column 4 on a set of indicators for the historical prevalence of colonial rule by the U.K., France, and any other major colonizing power, along with fixed effects for British and French legal origins that account for any residual influence of the legal code inherited by a country from the colonial period.…”