Blog

Angola is the first Portuguese colonial case prepared for AFLIT’s social-table series, introducing a Lusophone settler economy into a comparison that previously focused on British and French Africa (Aboagye & Bolt, 2021; Alfani & Tadei, 2019; Bigsten, 1986; Bolt & Hillbom, 2016; De Haas, 2022; Hillbom et al. 2024). The effort raises questions about which […]

Short Summary Who benefited from agricultural commercialization in colonial Africa? Using social tables for three African economies, we identify a small group of rural capitalists who captured disproportionate gains. We demonstrate how their strategies of accumulation varied across contexts and shaped divergent and often unequal development trajectories. Commercialization and the Rise of Rural Capitalists A […]

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. […]

Inequality regimes in the African context In recent years, the study of economic inequality has taken on a more global and historical perspective. Scholars such as Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic, and Walter Scheidel have challenged traditional ideas about the drivers of long-term trends in income and wealth distribution. This new global inequality literature has so […]

Maria Mwaipopo Fibæk talks to Karin Pallaver, a member of AFLIT and an Associate Professor of African History in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. Karin’s research draws on a multitude of historical sources of which many were collected at national archives in United Kingdom and East Africa and the […]

In my dissertation, I seek to investigate the roots of poverty and economic inequality in Tanzania and analyse how growth, inequality, and poverty interact in the country in four interrelated papers. Throughout the dissertation, the colonial period takes a prominent role, since a better understanding of the trends in inequality and living standards under colonial […]