Work in Progress


Africa’s Mineral Transition in Long-Term Perspective (with Ewout Frankema)

[Working Paper]

Using a new database of annual commodity exports and imports of 51 African countries spanning 1850-2020 this paper analyses Sub-Saharan Africa’s mineral transition in a long-term perspective. How did the transition towards mineral commodity exports emerge out of, and subsequently affect earlier specialization patterns in tropical crops inherited from the colonial and pre-colonial eras? We exploit the fact that slightly over half of sub-Saharan African countries underwent a mineral transition during the long 20th century - the rest retaining their crop export basis - to explore three dimensions of comparative development: (i) long-run commodity prices and terms-of-trade; (ii) macro-economic performance and poverty reduction; (iii) crowding out: did emerging mining industries erode agricultural exports, enhance food import dependence or constrain manufacturing growth? A historical perspective yields three insights. First, against the long-held view in the literature that primary commodity producers are locked into a race to the bottom, we show that the mineral transition has been spurred by a historically unique divergence between world market prices of crops and minerals. Second, oil exporters have embarked on a distinctly different development trajectory for the better (growth, fiscal balance) and worse (inequality, poverty), while non-oil mineral exporters diverged less from crop-exporters. Third, the mineral transition has crowded out agricultural and manufacturing exports, and this effect appears strongest in Africa’s oil-exporting economies.


Missionary Legacies of Gender Equality: Multidimensional Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (with Bastian Becker) 

[Working Paper]  Accepted European Review of Economic History

We study the long-term effects of Christian missionary activity in colonial Africa on present-day gender equality in relation to human capital, labor market participation, and norms. Novel historical data on the location of main missions, and the gender composition of their staff, is analyzed in combination with contemporary survey data on over one million respondents in 29 sub-Saharan countries. We find that colonial-era missions are associated with (i) greater present-day gender equality in human capital and (ii) more gender equal norms but (iii) have no effect on gender gaps in labor market participation. These effects are independent of Christian denominational differences as well as the presence of female missionaries (earliest centres of female education), whose initial positive effects on early colonial female education dissipated in the long-run. Our findings are robust across numerous specifications, historical and modern control variables, sample restrictions, birth cohorts, and spatial estimation strategies.


Gender Inequality in Urban British Africa: Evidence from Anglican Marriage Registers (with Jacob Weisdorf) 

[Working Paper]   [Video]   R&R Economic History Review

This study examines the colonial origins and evolution of gender inequality in mission schooling and formal labour force participation across six cities in British colonial Africa, using marriage register data for 30,000 Anglican brides and grooms well positioned to benefit from colonial educational and employment opportunities. The spouses’ signature literacy and occupational statistics reveal growing gender gaps during the early colonial period—both in access to mission schools and formal work. The gender gap in formal work was much more extensive than that in schooling, peaking in the 1930s but then rapidly declining again, helped by the Africanization and feminization of the British colonial public service towards decolonisation. Women’s alternatives to formal labour differed markedly across urban British Africa, with the majority of West African brides engaging in informal income-generating activities, contrasting their East African peers preoccupied with homemaking instead. We attribute these regional differences to women’s greater economic agency in precolonial West Africa, which persisted despite the Victorian gender ideals promoted by missionaries.


Crops, Prices or Policies? Commodity Exports in British and French West Africa (with Michiel de Haas, Ewout Frankema & Federico Tadei)


Abstract: African terms of trade (export/import prices) peaked around the time of the colonial scramble in the 1880s before starting a precipitous decline that lasted until the mid-20th century (Frankema et al. 2018). The declining terms of trade had a major impact on African economies, which were highly reliant on export agriculture. Still, the effect seems to have been different in British and French colonies. Preliminary evidence suggests that the decline in terms of trade was more severe in French West Africa than in British West Africa. Moreover, in British West Africa, the declining terms of trade were compensated with faster increases in the volume of exports compared to French West Africa. In this paper, we investigate the timing and drivers of this decline and explore the reasons for the diverging trajectories by evaluating three hypotheses. First, we explore commodity-specific explanations for a decline in the numerator (export prices), such as competition with Asia for rubber and palm oil, rapid production increases of cocoa in the market-leading economies of Ghana and Nigeria, and competition from non-tropical producers of cotton and groundnuts. Second, we consider how export prices were affected by trade policies related to dynamics both in the metropoles (industrial demand) and the colonies (colonial taxation, market power of trading companies, reaction of African producers) and we look at the ‘denominator’ (import prices) to see how changes in the composition and origin of manufactured imports influenced the differential trend in terms of trades. Third, we look at the ecological conditions to expand existing and/or develop new export crop production systems.


Ongoing Research