Colonization and Development in Africa: A Natural Experiment of the Nzima in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana

Did colonization affect the development of African countries? Existing research argues that the colonizer affected a variety of outcomes and did so in a causal way including but not limited to affecting ethnic versus national identities, views of traditional leaders, pro-social behavior, and other related outcomes. In their civilizing mission, for example, the French pushed against ethnic identities whereas the British with their emphasis on indirect rule encouraged ethnic identities. If this view is correct and colonization had long-run causal effects on identities broadly conceived then people today living in former French colonies should have less ethnic-only identities and different attitudes towards traditional leaders, their own communities (i.e., pro-social behavior), and African integration than those in British colonies. However, if colonization regardless of colonizer acted primarily as a catalyst and changed nothing from an institutional perspective then there should be no differences across these outcomes by colonizer. This paper argues that colonization in most cases acted as a catalyst and the colonizers used pre-existing institutions to accomplish their goals thus producing no appreciable long-run effects on identities and other such outcomes related to the long-run development of these places. Testing these competing claims is difficult, however, because colonization varied in many ways including by geography, timing, and other such factors thus making cross-national comparisons problematic. However, borders were in many cases arbitrarily drawn thus splitting the same people in the same place into two groups and providing a natural experiment by colonizer. The Nzima, an Akan sub-group in west Africa, is such an example as they were divided with some Nzima colonized by the French and other Nzima colonized by the British in the same part of west Africa. Building on this natural experiment, this project conducts a series of survey experiments on each side of the Ivorian-Ghanaian border examining how the Nzima respond to questions about identities related to ethnicity, traditional leaders, African integration, and their own communities (i.e., degree to which they exhibit pro-social behavior). In the context of the natural experiment, this paper also primes some of the respondents with a question about colonization while not treating others with the prime.