Moving Forward in African Economic History: Bridging the Gap Between Methods and Sources

The field of African economic history is in resurgence. This paper reviews recent and on-going research contributions and notes strengths in their wide methodological, conceptual and topical variety. In these strengths there is also a challenge: different methodological approaches may also result in divisions, particularly on the quantitative versus qualitative axis. The African Economic History Network has recently been formed to bridge the gap between methods and sources and to facilitate intellectual exchanges among the widest possible range of scholars working on Sub-Saharan economic history. This paper outlines current research projects and calls for future research as well as suggesting promising lines of enquiry in the discipline

Writing History Backwards or Sideways: Towards a Consensus on African Population‚ 1850-2010

This article aims to make an empirical and theoretical contribution towards the creation of a continent-wide dataset on African population extending into the pre-1950 era. We investigate the reliability and the validity of the current population databases with the aim of working towards a consensus on the long-term series of African total population with a reliable 1950 benchmark. The cases of Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana are explored to show the uneven coverage of census taking in colonial and post-colonial Africa and to demonstrate the need for an upward adjustment of the conventional 1950 benchmark. In addition, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Manning's approach of projecting population growth estimates backwards in time by adopting the available Indian census data as African ‘default growth rates’, and we propose an alternative approach by incorporating the demographic experiences of tropical land-abundant countries in South-East Asia

Writing History Backwards or Sideways: Towards a Consensus on African Population, 1850-present

This paper aims to make an empirical and theoretical contribution towards the creation of a continent wide data set on African population extending into the pre-1950 era. We investigate the reliability and the validity of the current population databases with the aim of working towards a consensus on the long term series of African total population with a reliable 1950 benchmark. The cases of Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are explored to show how uneven coverage census taking has been in colonial and post-colonial Africa and to demonstrate the need for an upward adjustment of the conventional 1950 benchmark. In addition, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Patrick Manning’s approach of projecting population growth estimates backwards in time by adopting the available Indian census data as African ‘default growth rates’ and propose an alternative approach by incorporating the demographic experiences of tropical land abundant countries in South East Asia

Patterns of Manufacturing Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Colonization to the Present

This paper reviews the 'long twentieth-century' development of 'modern' manufacturing in Sub-Saharan Africa from colonization to the present. We argue that classifying Africa generically as a 'late industrializer' is inaccurate. To understand the distinctively African pattern of manufacturing growth, we focus our discussion on the dynamic interplay between the region's specific endowment structures, global economic relationships and government policies. We conclude that the case of Sub-Saharan Africa is best characterized as interrupted industrial growth instead of sustained convergence on world industrial leaders. This is partly because, until very recently, the factor endowments made it very costly for states to pursue industrialization; and partly because successive rulers, colonial and post-colonial, have rarely had both the capacity to adopt and the dedication to sustain policies that modified the region's existing comparative advantage in primary production, by using their fiscal and regulatory powers effectively to promote industrialization

Wealth and poverty in African history

What is new in African economic history? A. G. Hopkins recently presented the “new economic history of Africa” to historians, and argued that it had appeared largely unnoticed by historians of Africa. Since some of the seminal contributions appeared in the early 2000s, there has arguably been a renaissance in African economic history. This chapter discusses some of the challenges of differences in approaches to the African past by economists and historians, and also some new empirical evidence that changes some of the dominant narratives of economic development in Africa

Long-term trends in economic inequality : Lessons from colonial Botswana, 1921-74

This article contributes to the growing literature on colonial legacies influencing long-term development. It focuses on Botswana, a case where the post-independence diamond-led economy has been considered an economic success story, despite its high levels of inequality. Here it is argued that this pathway of rapid resource-driven growth combined with increasing socio-economic inequality had already started during the time of the colonial cattle economy, and that this older case is equally relevant for understanding long-term growth-inequality trends in Botswana and other natural-resource-dependent economies. Six social tables, covering the period 1921 to 1974, are constructed using colonial archives, government statistics, and anthropological records. Based on the social tables, income inequality is estimated in the colonial and early post-independence eras, capturing both the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The article demonstrates how the creation of a cattle export sector in the 1930s brought new opportunities to access export incomes, and how this led to a polarization in cattle holdings and increasing income inequalities. Further, with the expansion of colonial administration, government wages forged ahead, increasing income inequality and causing a growing income divide between public and private formal employment