ABSTRACT

Christian missions in colonial Africa have contributed significantly to the expansion of formal education and thereby shaped the continent’s long-term economic and political development. This paper breaks new ground by showing that this process depended on local demand for education. It is argued that disagreements over norms, and in particular the struggle over polygamy, which resulted from missions’ insistence on monogamy in traditionally polygamous areas, lowered African demand for education. Analyses of geocoded data from historical and contemporary sources, covering most of sub-Saharan Africa, show that the struggle is associated with worse educational outcomes today. Effects are not limited to formal attainments but carry over to informal outcomes, in particular literacy. The findings attest to considerable heterogeneity in missionary legacies and suggest that local conditions should be given greater consideration in future studies on the long-term consequences of colonial-era interventions.

摘要

非洲殖民地的基督教传教士对正规教育的扩展做出了重大贡献，从而塑造了非洲大陆的长期经济和政治发展。本文通过表明这一过程取决于当地对教育的需求而开辟了新天地。有人认为，对规范的分歧，特别是对一夫多妻制的斗争，这是由于传教士在传统的一夫多妻制地区坚持一夫一妻制而导致的，降低了非洲对教育的需求。对覆盖撒哈拉以南非洲大部分地区的历史和当代来源的地理编码数据的分析表明，这场斗争与今天更糟糕的教育成果有关。影响不仅限于正式的成就，而且会延续到非正式的成果，特别是识字率。