Preliminary Programme

Despite the recent resurgence of African economic history, we still know little of human capital accumulation in the pre-colonial and early-colonial phase. Thanks to the availability of early census and survey data, we provide long-term estimates of numeracy for Senegal and other regions of West Africa (c. 1770 – 1900). The evidence shows that the numeracy of Africans over time was influenced by French colonial policy as much as it was the result of native cultural and socioeconomic traits. When analysing the determinants of regional numeracy, we find on the one hand that slavery and military campaigns had a substantial impact on human capital. On the other hand, the relative importance of peanut cultivation, the specific regional gradient that we observe and the role played by the demand for skills all suggest that African agency was central for human capital accumulation in the region.
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Previous studies were unable to find a positive effect of educational capital accumulation on labor productivity growth in the developing world, leading Pritchett (2001) to wonder where all the education had gone. We explore the economic implications of the 20th century schooling revolution from a different angle, by looking at the long-term development of the relative price structure of labor skills in two of the world’s poorest regions, i.e. sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. We exploit a variety of historical and contemporary sources on wages and salaries of various occupational categories of workers to demonstrate that the rapid rise in attainment levels propelled a dramatic ‘free fall’ of income premiums for traditional artisans, white-collar workers, and those skills required to absorb new technology regimes (e.g. electricity and ICT). Comparing our findings to the evolution of skill-premiums of early industrializers reveals a much more rapid decline in the developing world. Despite the fact that this is not a sufficient condition for labor productivity growth in itself, we argue that this revolutionary transformation of the cost structure of skills sheds a more optimistic light on the potential for catch-up growth in the 21st century.
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Mining is one of the largest industries in Southern Africa and contributes to a large share of GDP and fiscal revenue in ore rich countries. In this study we want to assess the effect that mining activity has had on the human capital formation of the indigenous population in Zambia and Congo by taking a long-term perspective. We’ll make use of government reports and mining company records dating back to the beginning of mining activities in the Zambian Copperbelt and in Congolese Katanga from the 1930s and 1920s respectively, until the 1970s. We’ll investigate the roles played by both state and private sector, as well as by white and black mining workers unions. In a quantitative analysis, we will assess and compare educational indicators like years of schooling and on the job training, as well as the skill premiums of mining workers. The very rich data sources allow us to incorporate in our analysis several other indicators of wellbeing including mortality, disease, and the housing and nutritional situation.
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What were the incentives for Africans, in terms of health and education, of converting to Christianity? We use patient registers from one of the earliest mission hospitals in Uganda to explore the links between religious affiliation, education, and health in colonial Africa. We use a novel dataset of more than 10,000 African male and female hospital patients of Christian, Muslim, and African traditional religion from 1908-70. We use age-heaping techniques and self-reported ages of adult patients to study the link between religion and educational attainments, finding that Christians were on average more numerate than non-Christians. We also study the link between religion and health, where health is measured by the type and stage of the disease at hospitalization, length of the hospital stay, and the health result after hospital treatment. We observe that Christian converts were healthier and better educated than non-Christians which suggests that adopting a new religion carried significant benefits in terms of personal wellbeing.

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