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Politics, public expenditure and the evolution of poverty in Africa 1920-2009

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  • Sue Bowden
  • Paul Mosley

Abstract

We investigate the historical roots of poverty, with particular reference to the experience of Africa during the 20th century. We find that institutional inheritance is an important influence on current underdevelopment; but in addition, we argue that the influence of policies on institutions is highly significant, and that in Africa at least, a high representation of European settlers in land ownership and policy-making was a source of weakness, and not of strength. We argue this thesis, using mortality rates as a proxy for poverty levels, with reference to two settler colonies – Zimbabwe and Kenya – and two peasant export colonies – Uganda and Ghana. Our findings suggest that in Africa, settler-type political systems tended to produce highly unequal income distributions and, as a consequence, patterns of public expenditure and investment in human and infrastructural capital which were strongly biased against smallholder agriculture and thence against poverty reduction. Peasant-export type political systems, on the other hand, produced more equal income distributions, whose policy structures and, consequently, production functions were less biased against the poor. As a consequence, liberalisation during the 1980s and 1990s produced asymmetric results, with poverty falling sharply in the ‘peasant export’ systems, and rising in settler economies. These contrasts in the evolution of poverty in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we argue, can only be understood by reference to differences between the settler and peasant export economies, whose roots lie in political decisions taken 100 years previously.

Suggested Citation

  • Sue Bowden & Paul Mosley, 2010. "Politics, public expenditure and the evolution of poverty in Africa 1920-2009," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 12510, GDI, The University of Manchester.
  • Handle: RePEc:bwp:bwppap:12510
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    Cited by:

    1. John M. Luiz, 2013. "A Review of Social Welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa: From the Colonial Legacy to the Millennium Development Goals," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(1), pages 110-121, March.
    2. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, 2012. "Output Per Head In Pre-Independence Africa: Quantitative Conjectures," Economic History of Developing Regions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 1-36, December.
    3. Leander Heldring & James A. Robinson, 2012. "Colonialism and Economic Development in Africa," NBER Working Papers 18566, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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