The Colonial Origins of Labour Market Duality in West Africa

This study examines the enduring impact of colonial cash crop cultivation on contemporary informal and precarious employment in West Africa. While the region’s integration into the global capitalist economy during the age of New Imperialism fundamentally restructured labour markets, existing research has often overlooked the long-term implications of these colonial legacies. In particular, the effects of colonial cash crop production on present-day labour outcomes remain understudied, with most scholarship relying on qualitative accounts or country-level analyses that obscure sub-national variation. Addressing this gap, the study employs a novel geospatial dataset that links historical data on colonial-era cash crop cultivation with contemporary microdata to estimate the causal effects on labour informality and income insecurity. The findings reveal that workers residing in areas historically associated with high-export-value colonial cash crop production exhibit significantly lower levels of income insecurity and are less likely to be informally employed. The magnitude of these effects is comparable to those observed for colonial-era mineral extraction and infrastructure development. Spatial spillover analysis shows that improvements in labour market outcomes extend beyond core plantation zones, but are often accompanied by increased informalisation in the hinterland. This pattern reflects well-documented historical dynamics in which localised gains from colonial cash crop development were achieved at the expense of broader regional equity. Lastly, serial mediation analysis identifies one mechanism sustaining these historical effects: the persistence of unequal social policy responses, which not only fail to redress colonial-era disparities but may also inadvertently reinforce them. Collectively, these findings underscore the pivotal role of colonial legacies in shaping West African labour markets and point to the need for transformative policies that restructure production systems and extend social protections beyond the formal sector.