Resources, Rule and Rebellion in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This thesis examines the fundamental role of natural resources in African state-building and development. I show how the economic organization of the colonial state around a limited number of cash crops and minerals continues to affect subnational variation in important political outcomes. More specifically, I examine how colonial resource extraction continues to shape spatial inequality, unequal ethnopolitical representation, ethnic identity salience, and armed conflict. I propose a macro-historical political geography framework that accounts for the dynamic interplay between geographic endowments, external demand and technology shocks, and political institution building. I apply this framework to the colonial age and derive specific implications on long-term legacies. I argue that the 19th century transition from slave trading to mineral and cash crop exports powerfully shaped the spatial organization of the colonial state. Fiscal, administrative, and regulatory institutions responded to the revenue potential and production modes of local resource endowments. Both mineral and agricultural source areas received greater colonial investment. Early investments in narrow resource enclaves caused severe levels of spatial inequality that persist until the present day. I use fine-grained geospatial data on colonial resource extraction, infrastructure investments and present-day development to credibly identify these effects. Mining areas were ruled more directly than their cash crop producing counterparts. Communal control over land and labor and significant profits in cash crop areas contributed to the rise of an early African elite. The revenue potential of cash crop production and the lack of direct state control make post-independence African governments more likely to include ethnic cash crop elites in their ministerial cabinets. I demonstrate that ethnic groups that saw colonial cash crop production in their homeland are significantly more likely to be included in post-colonial governments. Representation levels vary with changing market values of export crops. Throughout the colonial age, both mining and cash crop areas experienced in-migration and rising local levels of ethnic diversity. In cash crop areas, communal control over modernization benefits and rising diversity politicized ethnic identities. I show that inhabitants of colonial cash crop areas are more likely to identify in ethnic rather than national terms. Cross-cutting cleavages in urban mining towns, if anything, reduced ethnic identity salience. During economic downturns, politicized identities and inter-ethnic struggles increase the potential for local violence in cash crop areas. Combining historical depth with spatial granularity significantly improves our theoretical and empirical grasp of subnational development in Sub-Saharan Africa.