Introduction

African Long-term Inequality Trends, AFLIT, is a research network dedicated to constructing social tables for the advancement in mapping, estimating and analysing historical economic inequality trends in the sub-Sahara African region. Today Africa contains the largest between country variations in income inequality in the world, a spectrum that includes Southern Africa where we find extremely high levels. Currently, however, we lack both the empirical evidence and the theoretical understanding to explain the development and diversity of the different pathways. Researchers in AFLIT are committed to filling this empirical and theoretical gap. For more information click here.

Network Aims

The overall aim of AFLIT is to provide a platform for collaborations between researchers interested in constructing social tables for the study of long-term inequality trends in Africa. More concretely, this entails:

1. Organize workshops and similar events where researchers can discuss and develop comparable empirical studies of long-term inequality trends.
2. Attract funding and expand our international networks to encourage the construction of a growing number of inequality studies for African economies, particularly for the colonial era. The case studies will be made publicly available in a database.
3. Disseminate our research to the academic community and other stakeholders such as policy makers and the public through presentations at conferences and public events, publications of academic and non-academic texts, and social media.

News

Skill, race, and wage inequality in British Tanganyika

Articles October 1, 2024

Economic Disparities in Colonial Kenya: Income Inequality and Wage Differentiation

Blog August 30, 2024

In my dissertation, I investigate colonial-era economic disparities in Kenya and seek to answer the question of how unequal Kenyan colonial society was and what factors drove these inequalities in four interrelated papers. This investigation commences with an economy-wide analysis, which is then progressively narrowed down to different sectors, starting with the highly unequal wage sector. […]

Income inequality and export-oriented commercialization in colonial Africa: Evidence from six countries

Blog March 26, 2024

Today, Africa is characterized by substantial variations in income inequality levels between and within countries. While certain countries in West and North Africa portray a relatively equal distribution of incomes, others, notably in Central, Eastern, and especially Southern Africa, grapple with entrenched inequalities. Scholars have long identified two key historical explanations for the outcomes of […]