Most of Africa spent two generations under colonial rule and contrary to some recent commentaries highlighting the benefits of colonialism, it is this intense experience that has significantly retarded economic development across the entire continent. Many economic fellows and professors believe that relative to any plausible counter facts, Africa is poorer today than it would have been had colonialism not occurred.
The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 formalized what came to be known as the 'Scramble for Africa' - every European power arbitrarily divided Africa between themselves and started administrating their new colonies - 70 years later, these colonies looked so much different than what they looked in the 1880s, albeit with some exceptions. Would Africa's economic development have been different without colonialism? Would it have been richer today? Debate has raged on this question for the past 100 years but for the first time, exciting research by economic historians in colonial archives suggest that there is evidence of improved developmental outcomes within the colonial period - for instance, the real wages increased under the formal sector in British West Africa. The stature of military recruits in Ghana and British East Africa suggested that their heights increased during the colonial period - an increasing sign of prosperity among the native tribes. Most African nations steadily saw rising incomes over colonial period relative to the base year of 1885 - they were able to reap the benefits of the introduction of railways and mining technology. Being colonized meant deeper integration into world trade - yet, how much of this is due to colonialism and would it have happened anyway, that's still unclear. The fact that living standards increased on average doesn't imply that everybody's living standards improved - for instance, in South Africa, the impact of land expropriation and the creation of dual economies on incomes suggested that Africans experienced severe deterioration in living standards as the consequence of colonialism. So, we might observe formal sector wages go up while majority of the population was cut from the formal sector and saw their purchasing power deteriorate.
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Evaluating the impact of colonialism involves not just looking at the raw numbers but being counterfactual. We have to think about what the trajectories of African societies would have been in the absence of colonialism - for example, would the type of immiseration of South Africans have happened if the Zulu state had taken over the Rand and developed the gold mining industry? If Europeans brought technology, absent colonialism Africans could have adopted or innovated these themselves. It seems plausible that even without colonization, missionaries would have expanded education and the WHO would have brought medical technology. To understand the impact of colonialism, one has to think about what happened after colonialism as well - post independence Africa looked nothing like it would have done in the absence of colonialism - most of the mechanisms in place for the economic decline were creations of colonial society.
There were three types of colonies to give a proper report card per say - a centralized state such as Botswana, Ethiopia and Ghana; those of white settlement - Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe; and everyone else (colonies which did not experience white settlement or no significant precolonial state formation like Somalia and Sudan or where there was a mixture of centralized and decentralized societies such as Congo and Nigeria). It seems reasonable to believe that without colonialism each of these nations would have the same place with the rest of the world. This implies that missionaries would have gone to convert people and built schools, the League of Nations would have tried to abolish coerced labor and the WHO would have tried to disseminate medical tech. It implies that African countries would have continued to export as many had prior to 1885. In terms of political institutions, evidence clearly suggests that states like the Tswana states of Botswana, Asante state in Ghana or the Rwanda state were becoming centralized and consolidated - this doesn't imply that economic institutions were necessarily becoming better - it was just a prerequisite for law, order and public provision and though states also collapse, once started, there are strong forces leading political centralization to intensify.
Taking into account these trends as well as recognizing the need for counterfactual, I'd argue that in two sorts of colonies, there is a clear case to be made for colonialism retarding development - those with a centralized state at the time of Scramble for Africa and those of white settlement. In the former case, just the assumption that the previous patterns of political development would continue is sufficient to argue that these countries would be more developed today - colonialism not only blocked further political development, but indirect rule made local elites less accountable to their citizens. After independence, even if these states had a coherence that others lacked, they had far more predatory rulers - these nations also suffered from uniform colonial legacies of racism, stereotypes and misconceptions that Africans may not have had and which have since caused immense problems, mostly in Burundi and Rwanda. In colonies of white settlement, the most important factor was that the highly extractive nature of colonial rule and land grabs manifested themselves in quite a serious form during the colonial period. The evolution of international dissemination and diffusion of tech plus relative absence of slavery in this part of Africa makes it likely that without colonialism, African living standards would have slowly improved - plus, the large increases in inequality and racial/ ethnic conflicts bequeathed to these colonies after the end of colonialism makes it plausible that developmental outcomes in places like Zambia and Zimbabwe would be better today and over the last century had it not been colonized. The third set of cases is more complex because it doesn't seem plausible that precolonial institutions of Somalia, for example, were conducive to development or were undergoing a process of state formation. Many of these are ambiguous cases - for example, in Uganda, the British brought stability by stopping long-running conflicts between the pre-colonial states of Buganda, Bunyoro Ankole and Tooro. Evidence also suggests that these societies were even ready to adopt better tech when it appeared and any gains that might have been in terms of stability were reversed when the British left in 1962 - resulting in civil war, military dictatorship and political instability. All in all, it is difficult to bring available evidence to argue that there is any country today in Sub-Saharan Africa that is more developed because it was colonized by Europeans - quite the contrary really.
The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 formalized what came to be known as the 'Scramble for Africa' - every European power arbitrarily divided Africa between themselves and started administrating their new colonies - 70 years later, these colonies looked so much different than what they looked in the 1880s, albeit with some exceptions. Would Africa's economic development have been different without colonialism? Would it have been richer today? Debate has raged on this question for the past 100 years but for the first time, exciting research by economic historians in colonial archives suggest that there is evidence of improved developmental outcomes within the colonial period - for instance, the real wages increased under the formal sector in British West Africa. The stature of military recruits in Ghana and British East Africa suggested that their heights increased during the colonial period - an increasing sign of prosperity among the native tribes. Most African nations steadily saw rising incomes over colonial period relative to the base year of 1885 - they were able to reap the benefits of the introduction of railways and mining technology. Being colonized meant deeper integration into world trade - yet, how much of this is due to colonialism and would it have happened anyway, that's still unclear. The fact that living standards increased on average doesn't imply that everybody's living standards improved - for instance, in South Africa, the impact of land expropriation and the creation of dual economies on incomes suggested that Africans experienced severe deterioration in living standards as the consequence of colonialism. So, we might observe formal sector wages go up while majority of the population was cut from the formal sector and saw their purchasing power deteriorate.
Evaluating the impact of colonialism involves not just looking at the raw numbers but being counterfactual. We have to think about what the trajectories of African societies would have been in the absence of colonialism - for example, would the type of immiseration of South Africans have happened if the Zulu state had taken over the Rand and developed the gold mining industry? If Europeans brought technology, absent colonialism Africans could have adopted or innovated these themselves. It seems plausible that even without colonization, missionaries would have expanded education and the WHO would have brought medical technology. To understand the impact of colonialism, one has to think about what happened after colonialism as well - post independence Africa looked nothing like it would have done in the absence of colonialism - most of the mechanisms in place for the economic decline were creations of colonial society.There were three types of colonies to give a proper report card per say - a centralized state such as Botswana, Ethiopia and Ghana; those of white settlement - Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe; and everyone else (colonies which did not experience white settlement or no significant precolonial state formation like Somalia and Sudan or where there was a mixture of centralized and decentralized societies such as Congo and Nigeria). It seems reasonable to believe that without colonialism each of these nations would have the same place with the rest of the world. This implies that missionaries would have gone to convert people and built schools, the League of Nations would have tried to abolish coerced labor and the WHO would have tried to disseminate medical tech. It implies that African countries would have continued to export as many had prior to 1885. In terms of political institutions, evidence clearly suggests that states like the Tswana states of Botswana, Asante state in Ghana or the Rwanda state were becoming centralized and consolidated - this doesn't imply that economic institutions were necessarily becoming better - it was just a prerequisite for law, order and public provision and though states also collapse, once started, there are strong forces leading political centralization to intensify.
Taking into account these trends as well as recognizing the need for counterfactual, I'd argue that in two sorts of colonies, there is a clear case to be made for colonialism retarding development - those with a centralized state at the time of Scramble for Africa and those of white settlement. In the former case, just the assumption that the previous patterns of political development would continue is sufficient to argue that these countries would be more developed today - colonialism not only blocked further political development, but indirect rule made local elites less accountable to their citizens. After independence, even if these states had a coherence that others lacked, they had far more predatory rulers - these nations also suffered from uniform colonial legacies of racism, stereotypes and misconceptions that Africans may not have had and which have since caused immense problems, mostly in Burundi and Rwanda. In colonies of white settlement, the most important factor was that the highly extractive nature of colonial rule and land grabs manifested themselves in quite a serious form during the colonial period. The evolution of international dissemination and diffusion of tech plus relative absence of slavery in this part of Africa makes it likely that without colonialism, African living standards would have slowly improved - plus, the large increases in inequality and racial/ ethnic conflicts bequeathed to these colonies after the end of colonialism makes it plausible that developmental outcomes in places like Zambia and Zimbabwe would be better today and over the last century had it not been colonized. The third set of cases is more complex because it doesn't seem plausible that precolonial institutions of Somalia, for example, were conducive to development or were undergoing a process of state formation. Many of these are ambiguous cases - for example, in Uganda, the British brought stability by stopping long-running conflicts between the pre-colonial states of Buganda, Bunyoro Ankole and Tooro. Evidence also suggests that these societies were even ready to adopt better tech when it appeared and any gains that might have been in terms of stability were reversed when the British left in 1962 - resulting in civil war, military dictatorship and political instability. All in all, it is difficult to bring available evidence to argue that there is any country today in Sub-Saharan Africa that is more developed because it was colonized by Europeans - quite the contrary really.
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