The Impact of the Slave Trade on Literacy in West Africa: Evidence from the Colonial Era

Abstract

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of Africa's history of slave exporting to its current economic development. In this article, I show that differences in investment in education may be one of the channels through which that history has affected current development. I combine data on literacy rates of administrative districts from the colonial censuses of Nigeria and Ghana from the 1950s with data on slave exports of different ethnic groups. I find a negative and significant relationship between slave export intensity before the colonial era and literacy rates during the colonial era. I also use contemporary data on literacy rates to show that this negative relationship is still present and significant. Thus, I show the effect of the slave trades on development outcomes predates modern independent African countries and still persists.