Colonisation and Development in the Former French West Africa: The Long-term Impact of the Colonial Public Policy

To what extent did the colonial public policy influence the current regional inequalities in the French- speaking West Africa? This paper uses the differences in development outcomes across the areas of the former French West Africa to show the existence of colonial long term effects on development paths. To correct from potential biases, I take carefully into account the geographical and pre-colonial characteristics of the districts and use the spatial discontinuities of the colonial public policy to control for unobservable districts’ characteristics. Results show that colonial history is a strong determinant of current development of the districts of the former French West Africa. First, the African chiefs’ association to the colonial administration played a discriminating role between districts but its effects are ambiguous, positive on educational performances and negative on the health performances. Secondly, the colonial public investments in education, health and public works explain much of the current regional development inequalities. The nature of the public investment also matters: each type of current performance has been specifically determined by the corresponding colonial investment. The colonial public policies had thus very persistent effects and played a strong spatial discriminating role.