A Brief History of Race in Africa
Colonialism
did not ‘invent’ ethnicity. Many ethnic groups – such as the Ashanti in Ghana
and the Baganda in Uganda – have roots that long pre-date European occupation. Back
then, ethnicity was an extremely fluid construct: socio-cultural boundaries
were marked by fuzziness and flexibility, and many Africans existed within a
reality of multiple, overlapping and alternative collective identities. This
was largely driven by the scourges of war, famine and disease, which would
routinely destroy and dislocate entire communities.
By delineating Africans based on birth and defining their relationship
with colonial state in outwardly ethnic terms, colonialism made the concept of
race both inflexible and politicised. This was done for several reasons. First,
inventing the notion of ‘tribes’ proved to be a costless and efficient way of
locating, demarcating and counting the population of a colony for purposes of
surveillance and control. Tribal divisions also made it easier for administrators
to monitor their local ‘Big Men’: indigenous rulers who served as
intermediaries between the colonial state and the wider populace. These
relationships were defined by patrimonial logic: colonial elites would keep
local Big Men happy through the dispensing of resources who would in turn pacify
ethnic constituents by similar means.
The notion of tribalism was also supported by genuine ‘scientific’
beliefs at the time that Africans were naturally tribal and that some tribes
were inherently superior to others. For instance, in Rwanda, Belgian occupiers
viewed the Tutsi as ‘less African’ than the Hutu and privileged their status
accordingly.
Figure 1: The ‘Scientific’
Demarcation of Race in Rwanda
Source: The New Times
The net results of this was a power structure that
categorised and prioritised Africans in avowedly ethnic terms. Education was a
popular vehicle to deploy this favouritism: for example, in Burundi and Rwanda,
Western-style education was reserved almost exclusively for the Tutsi; in
Uganda the Baganda were educated at the expense of the Bonyoro, while in
Nigeria Christian missionaries set up schools in the Igbo South whilst leaving
the Hausa North virtually untouched (though this was for religious as well as
ethnic reasons). Largely by design, colonial administrators fomented a new indigenous
‘super-class’ which outwardly reflected the racial biases manifest in colonial
rule.
The Stickiness of Colonial Institutions
At independence, inaugural elites – themselves largely beneficiaries
of these power structures – found it expedient to maintain rather than dismantle
them. By emphasising ethnic divides, they could consolidate support within
their ethnic ‘in-group’ while disempowering the rest. Ethnicity proved such a
useful ‘mobilising’ tool because it could coexist with other types of
consciousness, papering over traditional cleavages like age, religion and
class.
As before, education proved an effective means to exhibit ethnic
favouritism. Not only were investments in education ‘visible’ to the populace, they
also safeguarded the dominance of a group between generations: by deciding who
to educate today, elites could effectively choose who would rule tomorrow.
In many countries, the endurance of this logic led to a
remarkable stickiness of racial hierarchies. Educational attainment amongst the
Brahmin in India, the Igbo/Yoruba in Nigeria and the Baganda in Uganda
continues to outstrip those of their ethnic neighbours. In each case,
contemporary dominance can largely be traced to the whims of colonial
favouritism.
Even in countries where ethnic groups exhibit greater mobility,
education policy remains shaped by ethnic considerations. As Franck and Rainer
(2009) show, the education enrolment of a particular ethnic group increases
when they have 'their man’ in power.
This discussion points to an important consequence of
colonialism: by creating communities who were greatly advantaged in terms of
human capital and legal rights, colonial administrators left behind societies
that were grossly unequal at the outset. This incipient inequality greatly
inhibited the development of inclusive political institutions, as the narrow
group of elites who inherited power were heavily incentivised to maintain institutions
that worked to their advantage (Engerman and Sokolof, 2005).
Final Words
A final word on colonialism. Imagine a spectrum on which
theories of colonialism can be placed. At each end are two ridiculously polemical
positions: on the left sits the view that colonialism has made no difference to
contemporary African development; on the right sits the view that colonialism
explains all idiosyncrasies of modern African states.
Clearly, any position too close to the left of this spectrum
is untenable – this post has shown just one (of many) long-term consequences of
colonialism on economic and institutional outcomes in Africa. However, we
should also be wary of arguments that sit too close to the right. Deferring to
colonialism as the ultimate cause of everything does a poor job in explaining
contemporary differences between Kenya and Tanzania: two countries with
ostensibly similar colonial experiences and initial conditions, yet with vastly
divergent postcolonial economic, political and social histories. It also robs
Africans of agency. Colonialism did not set in motion an unerring chain of
events irresponsive to the will of incumbent elites – such a view uniquely
misconstrues African leaders as passive objects of manipulation rather than
active shapers of history.
Why am I saying this? It is not to exonerate colonialism; rather,
it is to undermine the fatalistic idea that colonialism has doomed Africa to underdevelopment.
This is not just alarmingly defeatist – it is also patently untrue, as
demonstrated by development successes in Botswana, Mauritius and more recently
in Ethiopia and Rwanda. Making sense of these necessitates a balanced
perspective: we must remain sensitive to the long shadows cast by history while
at the same time avoiding overly-deterministic modes of thinking which under-value
prospects of future development.
Word count: 984 words
References
- Engerman and Sokolof (2005), ‘Colonialism, Inequality and Long-Run Paths of Development’
- Franck and Rainer (2009), ‘Does the Leader’s Ethnicity Matter? Ethnic Favouritism, Education and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa’
