Preliminary Programme

Over the past decade, several path breaking studies have extended our knowledge of real wages in (mostly British) colonial Africa (Bowden, Chiripanhura and Mosley 2008; Frankema and van Waijenburg 2012, Juif and Frankema 2016). They have shown a substantial range in welfare levels of unskilled labourers, and have proposed tentative explanations for the variety. In this paper, we seek to extend the empirical foundation of debates about comparative African welfare development beyond rural and urban unskilled wages, and provide a more comprehensive perspective on income structures of African colonial economies. We are interested in capturing income inequality, both within and between countries. Various scholars have already, or are currently, constructed social tables for 9 British and 3 French colonies for a series of benchmark years between 1880 and 1970 (e.g. Aboagye and Bolt 2017; Bolt and Hillbom 2016). We take stock of these social tables, provide a first attempt at harmonization and comparison, and explore the potential for testing key explanations for inequality and welfare development, related to distinctions between peasant and settler colonies, British and French Africa and the various resource bases of African economies (annual crops, perennial crops, cattle, minerals, etc.). As we are comparing and analysing the differences in income levels, we are also able to trace temporal and spatial patterns of rural-urban divides as well as skill and race premiums. (Show less)

Industrial mining has been one of the key drivers of mass labour migration across Southern Africa. In this paper, we will offer a regional perspective on mine labour migration over the twentieth century and will make two contributions to the extensive literature on this migration. The first is to shift the focus from cyclical labour migration to the South African Rand by identifying labour flows within and between economies across the region. The second is to contest the increasingly commonplace assertion that colonial borders did not significantly impede or shape patterns of labour migration, and instead argue that in some places political regimes did carefully manage labour migration. The salience of borders tended to increase over the twentieth century.

Mining labour tends to be relatively well documented across the region. We will draw on data from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Katanga and eSwatini to create a comprehensive picture of patterns of labour migration in Southern Africa over the long twentieth century. (Show less)