The Effect of Pre-Colonial Ethnic Institutions and European Influences on Contemporary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Present-day education outcomes in Africa cannot independently be attributed to pre-colonial ethnic institutions, exposure to historical missionary activity or colonial rule. It is instead the complementarity or contention between these European influences and pre-colonial ethnic institutions such as political centralisation that result in education outcomes we observe today. Using geolocated DHS literacy outcomes for thirteen sub-Saharan African countries, our findings suggest pre-colonial political centralisation and European influences have heterogeneous effects on contemporary literacy, depending on the interaction between these institutions. This paper contributes to debates on colonial and pre-colonial ethnic influences on African development, moving beyond country-level analysis.

Keywords:

• Africa
• colonial rule
• missionaries
• ethnic institutions
• literacy

Acknowledgements

We thank seminar audiences at Economic Society of South Africa (ESSA) Conference in Johannesburg 2019, Economic Development and Well-being Research Group (EDWRG) Online Seminar 2020, Economic History Association (EHA) Online Conference 2020, Economic History Society (EHS) Online Conference 2021, Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) Annual Meeting in Cape Town 2019 and Online 2020 for helpful comments. We acknowledge comments received from Brian Dillon and Daniel Posner at WGAPE Annual Meetings, Johan Fourie at ESSA Conference, and anonymous referees. A previous version of this paper is an ERSA Working Paper, No. 850, available for download from http://www.econrsa.org/publications/working-papers/effect-colonial-and-pre-colonial-institutions-contemporary-education. Data and code available on request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Colonial rule is also associated with other contemporary development outcomes. Angeles (2007) finds that colonialism is a determining factor of income inequality observed today. In areas where the percentage of European settlers were higher (yet still in minority), inequality increased due to exclusion of owning resources. Easterly and Levine (2016) find that countries with larger European settlements during the colonial period have higher contemporary economic development relative to countries with smaller European settlements. Anderson (2018) finds a strong association between colonial institutions and present-day HIV rates amongst females. Common law colonies are associated with weaker female marital property rights and therefore suffer from higher HIV rates.

2 See Jedwab et al. (2022) for a summary of studies on the long-term effects of missionaries on development outcomes.

3 Following World War I in 1916, Kamerun was divided between British and French territories. In 1961 after independence, British Cameroon regions were allocated between Cameroon and Nigeria, with Southern regions voting to join present-day Cameroon and the Northern regions voting to join Nigeria.

4 In the Kuba Kingdom, more developed pre-colonial ethnic institutions are negatively associated with norms of rule and the likeliness to obey national laws (Lowes, Nunn, Robinson, & Weigel, 2017).

5 Visually impaired individuals and those that did not have the appropriate language reading card are coded as missing.

6 See Table 1 for the number of individuals according to political centralisation, colonial rule and missionary activity. We provide country-level descriptive statistics in Appendix A.

7 The variable, capital_ec, is assigned to the current capital cities in our sample of countries. Since 1983, Yamoussoukro has been the capital city in Côte d’Ivoire. Since 1991, Abuja is Nigeria’s capital (it was Lagos). In Tanzania, the capital city is Dodoma (prior to 1996, it was Dar es Salaam).

8 Although the interaction coefficient estimate is not statistically significant in Table 3 column 3, the marginal effect of exposure to historical missionary activity in pre-colonial centralised ethnic regions is statistically significant as standard errors are re-estimated for the compounded effect.

9 A doubling of the number of historical mission stations per area of an individual’s centralised ethnic region is associated with a 19.1 percentage point increase in the likelihood of being literate today, relative to 16.8 percentage points for individuals residing in pre-colonial fragmented ethnic regions.

10 The marginal effect is calculated by taking the derivative of our main estimating equation with respect to historical missionary activity exposure. Therefore, 0.648 – 0.383central_e – 0.515British_ec + 0.456central_e*British_ec.

11 A doubling of the number of historical mission stations per area of an individual’s centralised ethnic region colonised by the British is associated with a 26.5 percentage point increase in the likelihood of being literate today. In fragmented ethnic regions, the interrelated effect of historical missionary activity and British colonial rule is associated with a 15.8 percentage point increase. In fragmented ethnic regions colonised by the French, the average marginal effect of historical missionary activity is again higher and associated with a 56.2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of being literate.