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Receding - Reseeding _ Technology Unfolding

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The supply of African slaves to American plantations reached an all-time high in the late 18th century (Klein 1999). After anti-slave trade legislation finally shut down the Atlantic slave exports, commodity exports filled the gap. This so-called 'commercial transition' was completed in West Africa before it hit East Africa (Austen 1987, Law 2002). It was a game-changer, since it put a halt to the continuous drain of scarce labour and paved the way for the expansion of land-intensive forms of tropical agriculture, engaging smallholders, communal farms, and estates.

The establishment of colonial rule over the African interior (c. 1880-1900) reinforced Africa's commodity export growth. Colonial control facilitated the construction of railways, induced large inflows of European investment, and forced profound changes in the operation of labour and land markets (Frankema and van Waijenburg 2012). That is, colonial regimes abolished slavery, but they replaced it with other forced labour schemes. The scramble pushed African exports to new heights, but without the preceding era of commercialisation the African scramble probably would never have taken place.
The Industrial Revolution
Africa's commercial transition was inextricably connected to the rising demand for industrial inputs from the industrialising core in the North Atlantic. Revolutions in transportation (railways, steamships), a move towards liberal trade policies in Europe, and increasing rates of GDP growth enhanced demand for (new) manufactures, raw materials and tropical cash crops. African producers responded to this demand by increasing exports of vegetable oils (palm oil, groundnuts), gum, ivory, gold, hides and skins. Palm oil, a key export, was highly valued as a lubricant for machinery and an ingredient in food and soap. During and after the scramble, the range of commodity exports broadened to include raw materials like rubber, cotton, and copper, as well as cash crops such as cocoa, coffee, tea and tobacco. The lion's share of these commodities went directly to manufacturing firms and consumers in Europe. Meanwhile, technological innovations also reduced the costs of colonial occupation. These included the Maxim gun, the steamship, the railway and quinine, the latter lowering the health risks to Europeans in the disease-ridden interior of the 'dark continent'.
The African trade boom
To obtain a deeper understanding of the connection between Africa's commercial transition and subsequent colonial intervention, we constructed annual time-series of export volumes, export values, commodity export prices, import prices, and the net barter terms (the ratio of average export to average import prices). The data cover the period from the heyday of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1790s to the eve of World War II, and make it possible to analyse the commercial transition with much greater precision than was possible previously and to compare the development of African trade with other commodity exporting regions (Williamson 2011).

There was a prolonged rise in the net barter terms of trade for sub-Saharan Africa from the 1790s to the 1880s, a commodity price boom that was especially pronounced in the four decades between 1845 and 1885. Figure 1 shows that this secular price boom peaked exactly at the date of the Berlin conference (1884-5), when diplomats negotiated how to carve up Africa among the European imperialists. The terms of trade tripled in just four decades. While the terms of trade for commodity exporters were rising everywhere in what was once called the Third World, nowhere was the boom greater than for Africa. Furthermore, the scramble started right at the moment when African exports reached their highest exchange value.

Figure 1. Terms of trade for sub-Saharan Africa, 1784-1939 (1900=100)
Notes: Excluding South Africa, Mauritius, Madagascar and Reunion. Smoothed trend derived using Hodrick-Prescott filter, with a smoothing factor set to 100.
The share of West African exports in French imperial trade was much larger than it was in British imperial trade. Around the mid-19th century, about two thirds of French imperial trade was with Africa, the largest part of it with North Africa (e.g. Algeria), but a substantial share was also with West Africa. British imperial trade was dominated by India, and this distinction is consistent with the chronology of the scramble. The French set a chain reaction in motion by moving into the West African interior to survey the possibilities of a railway connection between the major trading hubs of the middle Niger delta (Gao, Timbuktu) and their trading enclaves along the Senegalese coast. The British responded by securing the lower Niger delta. After less than two decades, virtually the entire continent was divided among a handful of European powers.
Africa's commodity boom in global perspective
The long-term secular trend of sub-Saharan Africa's terms of trade coincided with the patterns observed in other parts of the commodity-exporting periphery. However, the price boom of 1845-1885 was exceptionally sharp compared with Latin America, Southeast Asia, India and China. From start to peak, the purchasing power of African exports rose by 3% per annum. Although Africa's share of world exports remained modest, the trend fuelled an optimistic assessment of the future profitability of colonisation, French assessments in particular. Merchants, industrial capitalists, explorers (like David Livingstone) and even Christian missionaries added to the babble about new markets, new investment prospects, new converts, and the moral obligation to abolish African slavery and replace it with a commercial model.
Did colonisation lock Africa into a perverse path of specialisation?
Ironically, the secular terms of trade boom turned into an equally prolonged bust right at the time that the scramble gained steam. This price bust continued, with only some temporary reversals, up to the eve of World War II. In fact, in 1940 Africa's terms of trade were back at their 1800 levels. Table 1 below shows that export volumes continued to expand after 1885 at a faster pace than before, thus offsetting the price declines. In other words, African farmers, European planters and mining firms specialised more and more in commodities as they became worth less and less.

Table 1. Decomposition of export growth in British and French West Africa, 1850-1929

Does this mean that European colonisation locked Africa into a path of perverse specialisation? There are two plausible answers to this question: "yes" and "no". The "yes" view is that expanding imports of European manufactures, coercive cultivation and mining schemes, and free-trade policies effectively pre-empted a diversification of African economies into manufacturing and eroded indigenous handicrafts. Only white-dominated settler economies that were able to operate with some degree of autonomy, such as South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, managed to develop a substantial industrial sector, albeit relying on a combination of protective barriers and African labour coercion. The alternative answer is "no". Colonial trade simply followed a path that had already been blazed in the early 19th century. Manufacturing was inconsistent with African endowments and thus its comparative advantage. With abundant land and mineral resources, and scarce labour and human capital, commodity specialisation was the most efficient way to exploit world trade, and to move up the technology and skill ladder (Austin et al. 2016). The debate between these two competing views has not yet been resolved.
Is history repeating?
Today, China uses diplomacy in Africa instead of brute force, and it does not seem to aspire to formal political control in the region. Yet, African economies are again responding to the rising demand for commodities by a rapidly industrialising power. Chinese investments in land, infrastructure and mines are flowing in. Mineral exports, and especially oil, are again taking a growing share of African exports. History shows that such export booms are unsustainable, but what are the chances that Africa will avoid a renewed cycle of commodity dependency? As we ponder the answer, a major difference with history should be noted. With a projected population of over 3 billion, Africa will be one of the most populous regions of the world in 2050. If African policymakers find ways to invest commodity windfalls in the health and education of the next generations and to increase trade with neighbour countries, export growth may do more to stimulate African economic development than it did a century ago.
References
Austen, R A (1987), African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency, London: James Curry/Heinemann.

Austin G, E Frankema and M Jerven (2016), "Patterns of Manufacturing Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Colonization to the Present," forthcoming in K O'Rourke and J G Williamson (eds), The Spread of Modern Manufacturing to the Periphery, 1870 to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frankema E, J G Williamson and P Woltjer (2015), "An economic rationale for the African scramble: the commercial transition and the commodity price boom of 1845-1885." NBER Working Paper 21213.

Frankema, E H P and M Van Waijenburg (2012), "Structural Impediments to African Growth? New Evidence from Real Wages in British Africa, 1880-1965", Journal of Economic History 72(4), pp. 895-926.

Klein, H S (1999), The Atlantic slave trade, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Law, R (2002), From slave trade to legitimate commerce: the commercial transition in nineteenth-century West Africa, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Williamson, J G (2011), Trade and poverty when the Third World fell behind, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Footnote
1 These data will be made available as part of Wageningen African Commodity Trade Database, 1500-present, to be released in the autumn of 2015 at the website of the African Economic History Network, www.aehnetwork.org
This article is published in collaboration with VoxEU. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum. To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Author: Ewout Frankema is professor and chair of Rural and Environmental History at Wageningen University and elected member of the Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Jeffery Williamson is the Laird Bell Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Pieter Woltjer is a postdoc researcher at Wageningen University (department of Rural and Environmental History) where he is currently working on the study of long-term African welfare development.
Image: A woman walks by the beach of Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa. REUTERS/Marko Djurica.

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How Africa's colonial history affects its development

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The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in 1971, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Forum is tied to no political, partisan or national interests.

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Understanding the long-run effects of Africa's slave trades
Editor's note: This column first appeared as a chapter in the Vox eBook, The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History, Volume 2, available to download here.
Between 1400 and 1900, the African continent experienced four sizeable slave trades. The largest and best-known was the trans-Atlantic slave trade where, beginning in the 15th century, slaves were shipped from West Africa, West Central Africa, and Eastern Africa to the European colonies in the New World. The three other slave trades - the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave trades - were smaller in scale and predated the trans-Atlantic slave trade. During the trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves were taken from south of the Saharan desert and shipped to Northern Africa. In the Red Sea slave trade, slaves were taken from inland of the Red Sea and shipped to the Middle East and India. In the Indian Ocean slave trade, slaves were taken from Eastern Africa and shipped either to the Middle East, India, or the plantation islands in the Indian Ocean. In total, close to 20 million slaves were taken from the continent (Nunn 2008). According to the best estimates, by 1800 Africa's population was half of what it would have been, had the slave trades not occurred (Manning 1990).

Slaves were captured through kidnappings, raids, and warfare. A summary of the method of enslavement among a sample of 144 former slaves is provided in Table 1. Historical accounts suggest that the pervasive insecurity, violence and warfare had detrimental impacts on the institutional, social, and economic development of societies. There are numerous examples of the slave trades causing the deterioration of domestic legal institutions, the weakening of states, and political and social fragmentation (e.g. Inikori 2000, 2003, Heywood 2009).

Table 1. The methods of enslavement of Koelle's Informants
Notes: The data are from Sigismund Koelle's Linguistic Inventory. The sample consists of 144 informants, interviewed by Koelle, for which their means of enslavement is known.
The most illustrative example of this is the experience of the Kongo Kingdom, which was contacted in 1493 by Diogo Cao. Initially, a diverse array of products was traded between the Kongo Kingdom and the Portuguese, including copper, textiles, ivory, and slaves. At first, the only slaves to be traded were prisoners of war and criminals. However, the Portuguese demand for slaves, the pervasiveness of slave traders and merchants, and competition for the throne within the Kingdom all resulted in a dramatic and uncontrollable increase in slave capture and raiding throughout the Kingdom. By 1514, King Afonso (the Kongo King) had already written to the King of Portugal, complaining that the Portuguese merchants were colluding with noblemen to illegally enslave Kongolese citizens. In 1526, in an effort to end the trade, King Afonso requested the removal of all Portuguese merchants. In the end, his efforts were unsuccessful. Large scale slave-raiding continued unchecked into the 16th century, when it culminated in the Jaga invasion of 1568-1570. Large-scale civil war ensued from 1665-1709, resulting in the collapse of the once-powerful Kingdom (Heywood 2009).

An empirical literature has emerged that aims to supplement these historical accounts with quantitative estimates of the long-run impact of Africa's slave trades. The first paper that attempted to provide such estimates was Nunn (2008). In the study, I undertook an empirical test, with the following logic. If the slave trades are partly responsible for Africa's current underdevelopment, then, looking across different parts of Africa, one should observe that the areas that are the poorest today should also be the areas from which the largest number of slaves were taken in the past.

To undertake this study, I had to first construct estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in Africa during the slave trades (i.e. between 1400 and 1900).

These estimates were constructed by combining data on the number of slaves shipped from each African port or region with data from historical documents that reported the ethnicity of over 106,000 slaves taken from Africa. Figure 1 provides an image showing a typical page from these historical documents. The documents shown are slave manumission records from Zanzibar. Each row reports information for one slave, including his/her name, ethnicity, age, and so on.

After constructing the estimates and connecting these with measures of modern day economic development, I found that, indeed, the countries from which the most slaves had been taken (taking into account differences in country size) were today the poorest in Africa. This can be seen in Figure 2, which is taken from Nunn (2008). It shows the relationship between the number of slaves taken between 1400 and 1900 and average real per capita GDP measured in 2000. As the figure clearly shows, the relationship is extremely strong. Furthermore, the relationship remains robust when many other key determinants of economic development are taken into account.

Figure 1 Excerpt from document taken from Zanzibar archives

Figure 2 The relationship between slave exports (normalised by a country's land area) and real per capita GDP in 2000. Both variables are measured on a log scale

An alternative interpretation of the relationship shown in Figure 2 is that the parts of Africa from which the largest number of slaves were taken were initially the most underdeveloped. Today, because those characteristics persist, these parts of Africa continue to be underdeveloped and poor.

I also tested this alternative hypothesis by checking whether it was, in fact, the initially least developed parts of Africa that engaged most heavily in the slave trades. I find that the data suggest that, if anything, it was the parts of Africa that were initially the most developed, not least developed, that supplied the largest number of slaves. In the analysis, I also used a statistical technique called instrumental variables estimation to identify the causal effect of the slave trade on economic development. The findings from the instrumental variables estimates suggested that increased extraction during the slave trades did, indeed, cause worse economic performance. Overall, the conclusion from the analyses is that the relationship shown in Figure 2 is most likely causal and not spurious.

My estimates in Nunn (2008) allowed, for the first time, the impacts the slave trades had on economic development to be understood quantitatively. In particular, using the estimates, one is able to calculate how much more developed Africa would be, if the slave trades had not taken place. These calculations were undertaken in Nunn (2010). As an initial step in the calculation, first note that the mean level of average per capita income of the countries in Africa is $1,834 (measured in 2000). This is significantly lower than the income for the rest of the world (which is $8,809), and it is much lower even than the income of other developing countries (which is $4,868), where a developing country is defined as one with less than $14,000 in per capita income. According to the estimates from Nunn (2008), if the slave trades had not occurred, then 72% of the average income gap between Africa and the rest of the world would not exist today, and 99% of the income gap between Africa and other developing countries would not exist. In other words, had the slave trades not occurred, Africa would not be the most underdeveloped region of the world and it would have a similar level of development to Latin America or Asia.

My findings in Nunn (2008) provided suggestive evidence that much of Africa's poor performance can be explained by its history, which is characterised by over 400 years of slave raiding. Although my analysis stopped short of providing a definitive understanding of exactly how and why the slave trades were so detrimental to economic development, it did provide suggestive evidence that was consistent with historical accounts of the slave trades resulting in a weakening and underdevelopment of political structures, as well as in impeding the formation of broader ethnic groups, leading to more ethnic diversity. The study showed that the countries from which the largest numbers of slaves were taken were also the areas that had the most underdeveloped political structures at the end of the 19th century, as well as being the countries that are the most ethnically fragmented today.

A number of studies followed on from the research in Nunn (2008), by attempting to better understand the channels through which the slave trades affect economic development today. Green (2013) revisited the impact of the slave trade on ethnic fractionalisation. He extended the findings in Nunn (2008) by examining the entire world, and constructing estimates of the export of slaves in all countries in the world. Using these data, he also found a strong relationship between slave exports and greater ethnic fractionalisation.

According to his estimates, all of the difference in ethnic fractionalisation between Africa and the rest of the world can be explained by its experience with the slave trades.

In a series of studies, Whatley and Gillezeau (2011) and Whatley (2014) combine slave shipping records with ethnographic data and estimate the relationship between slave shipments and institutional quality and ethnic diversity in the locations close to the ports of shipment. Their analysis, consistent with Nunn (2008) and Green (2013), indicates that the slave trades did result in greater ethnic fractionalisation. In addition, their analysis also shows that the slave trades resulted in a deterioration of local ethnic institutions, measured in the late pre-colonial period.

Another subsequent study, undertaken by Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) asks whether the slave trades resulted in a deterioration of trust. The paper's line of enquiry was motivated by two facts. The first is that trust has been long-hypothesised to be an important foundation for economic prosperity (e.g. Algan and Cahuc 2010). The second was the fact that, during the slave trades, individuals frequently turned on one another, kidnapping, tricking, and selling each other into slavery. The existing historical evidence indicates that these forms of betrayal were common. For example, among the sample of slaves reported in Table 1, 20% became slaves because they were tricked by a family member or friend.

In our study, Wantchekon and I extended the data construction efforts in Nunn (2008) and constructed estimates of the number of slaves taken from each ethnic group in Africa (rather than country). The ethnicity level estimates are displayed visually in Figure 3. The analysis combined the ethnicity-level slave export estimates with fine-grained household survey data, which reports individuals' trust of those around them, whether neighbours, relatives, local governments, co-ethnics, or those from other ethnicities. The study documented a strong negative relationship between the intensity of the slave trade among one's ethnic ancestors and an individual's trust in others today.

The study then attempted to distinguish between the two most likely channels through which the slave trades could have adversely affected trust. One is that the slave trades made individuals and their descendants inherently less trusting. That is, it created a culture of distrust. In the insecure environment of the slave trade, where it was common to experience the betrayal of others, even friends and family, greater distrust may have developed, which could persist over generations even after the end of the slave trade.

Another possibility is that the slave trades may have resulted in a long-term deterioration of legal and political institutions, which are then less able to enforce good behaviour among citizens, and as a result people trust each other less today.

The study undertook a number of different statistical tests to identify the presence and strength of the two channels. They found that each of the tests generated the same answer: both channels are present. The slave trades negatively affected domestic institutions and governance, which results in less trust today. In addition, the slave trade also directly reduced the extent to which individuals were inherently trusting of others. We also found that, quantitatively, the second channel is twice as large as the first channel.

The ethnicity-level slave export estimates I constructed with Wantchekon spurred a second line of research that looked into other impacts of the slave trade, using the new finer-grained data. For example, Zhang and Kibriya matched the ethnicity-level slave export data from Nunn and Wantchekon (2008) with fine-grained data on the location and intensity of conflicts within Africa from 1997-2014. They find a strong positive relationship between the intensity of the slave trades and the prevalence of civil conflict today. Given the strong link between income and conflict, this likely represents an important channel behind the reduced-form relationship between the slave trades and income documented in Nunn (2008).

A number of subsequent studies have also explored other cultural consequences of the slave trades. For example, research by Edlund and Ku (2011), Dalton and Leung (2014), and Bertocchi and Dimico (2015) found that the trans-Atlantic slave trade resulted in a long-term increase in the prevalence of polygyny (i.e. the practice of men having multiple wives). This is due to the fact that it was primarily males who were captured and shipped to the Americas, resulting in a shortage of men and skewed sex ratios within many parts of Africa. Interestingly, Dalton and Leung (2014) found that there is no evidence of such an impact for the Indian Ocean slave trade, where there was not a strong preference for male slaves. This has led the authors to conclude that Africa's history of the slave trades is the primary explanation for why today polygyny is much more prevalent in West Africa than in East Africa.

Figure 3 Maps showing the number of slaves taken from each ethnic group in Africa during the trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades

a) Indian slave exports

b) Atlantic slave exports

The study by Bertocchi and Dimico (2015) is particularly interesting, because it takes the analysis one step further and shows that the greater prevalence of polygyny, which arose due to the slave trade, has led to an increase in HIV rates. They document that women who are in a polygynous relationship are more likely to have sexual partners other than their husband. This is perhaps not surprising, since in polygamous societies wealthy older men are typically the ones who have multiple wives, leaving a large number of young able-bodied men, without wives, able and willing to engage in extramarital relationships. Thus, according to the authors' findings, the trans-Atlantic slave trade is an important factor in explaining the high rates of HIV in Africa today.

A study by Teso (2016) also examined the consequences of the skewed sex ratio that resulted during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but focused on the impacts on female labour force participation. The shortage of males in the population, during the trans- Atlantic slave trade, meant that women had to undertake many of the tasks traditionally performed by men, such as those in agriculture, or in the military, and to accept positions of leadership and authority. The Dahomean female 'Amazon' army, shown in Figure 2, is the best-known example of this. The female army was established by Dahomey in the 17th century at the height of the slave trade, and their existence continued until the end of the 19th century. Teso's (2016) research shows that those parts of Africa that experienced the trans-Atlantic slave trade most severely have higher rates of female labour force participation today.

Figure 4 A photo of the female army of Dahomey, who were often referred to as 'Amazons'

A number of studies have turned the line of research started in Nunn (2008) on its head by asking, not 'What were the consequences of the slave trades?', but 'What were the causes of the slave trades?'. Fenske and Kala (2015) examined what role weather played by combining information on slave shipments with data on annual historical temperatures, measured at a 5-degree grid-cell level. They found that negative weather shocks (taking the form of abnormally cold years) increased the supply of slaves from the locations that experienced these shocks. They also find that locations that experienced such shocks during the height of the slave trade tend to have lower income levels today. In a separate study, the same authors examined how the suppression of the slave trade after 1807 affected slave shipments (Fenske and Kala 2016). Not surprisingly, the suppression led to a decline in slave exports, although this was focused in British-controlled parts of the continent. The authors also showed that the decline in slave exports occurred alongside an increase in violence and coercion within the continent. Thus, the evidence suggests that not only did the slave trade have detrimental effects, but possibly its abolition did too.

A study by Nunn and Puga (2015) has examined the extent to which geography affected the capture and export of slaves during the slave trades. My co-author and I used the data from Nunn (2008) to document how uneven terrain, taking the form of cliffs, ridges, and escarpments, was used by societies to defend against and escape from slave raiders. The uneven terrain could be used to help build defensive fortifications and to provide places to escape, in the face of slave raids. We show that, as a consequence, those places in Africa that are more rugged were better able to escape the slave trade and, thus, are richer today.

Although research understanding the long-term impacts of Africa's slave trades is still in progress, the evidence accumulated up to this point suggests that this historic event played an important part in the shaping of the continent, in terms of not only economic outcomes, but cultural and social outcomes as well. The evidence suggests that it has affected a wide range of important outcomes, including economic prosperity, ethnic diversity, institutional quality, the prevalence of conflict, the prevalence of HIV, trust levels, female labour force participation rates, and the practice of polygyny. Thus, the slave trades appear to have played an important role in shaping the fabric of African society today.

References

Algan, Y and P Cahuc (2010), "Inherited Trust and Growth," American Economic Review 100 : 2060-2092.

Bertocchi, G and A Dimico (2015), The Long-Term Determinants of Female HIV Infection in Africa: The Slave Trade, Polygyny, and Sexual Behavior, IZA DP No. 9102

Dalton, J T and T C Leung (2014), "Why is Polygyny More Prevalent in Western Africa? An African Slave Trade Perspective", Economic Development and Cultural Change, 63 599-632.

Edlund, L and H Ku (2011), The African Slave Trade and the Curious Case of General Polygyny, MPRA Paper NO. 52735

Fenske, J and N Kala (2015), "Climate and the Slave Trade", Journal of Development Economics, 112: 19-32.

Fenske, J and N Kala (2016), 1807: Economic Shocks, Conflict and the Slave Trade, Working paper.

Green, E (2013), "Explaining African Ethnic Diversity", International Political Science Review, 34: 235-253.

Heywood, L (2009), "Slavery and its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo: 1491-1800", Journal of African History, 50: 1-22.

Inikori, J E (2000), "Africa and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade," in Africa Volume I: African History before 1885, Toyin Falola, (ed.), Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Inikori, J E (2003), "The Struggle against the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade," in Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, A. Diouf, (ed.), Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

Manning, P (1990), Slavery and African Life, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Nunn, N (2008), "The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123: 139-176.

Nunn, N 2010), "Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades", in J Diamond and J A Robinson (eds.), Natural Experiments of History, pp. 142-184. Harvard University Press.

Nunn, N and D Puga (2012), "Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa", Review of Economics and Statistics, 94: 20-36.

Nunn, N and L Wantchekon (2011), "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa", American Economic Review, 101: 3221-3252.

Teso, E (2016), The Long-Term Effect of Demographic Shocks on the Evolution of Gender Roles: Evidence from the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Working Paper, Harvard University.

Whatley, W and R Gillezeau (2011), "The Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Ethnic Stratification in Africa", American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 101: 571-576.

Whatley, W C (2014), "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Origins of Political Authority in West Africa", In E Akyeampong, R H Bates, N Nunn, J A Robinson (eds) Africa's Development in Historical Perspective, pp. 460-488. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Zhang, Y and S Kibriya (2016), The Impact of the Slave Trade on Current Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, Working paper, Texas A&M University.

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Understanding the long-run effects of Africa's slave trades

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Evidence suggests that Africa's slave trades played an important part in the shaping of the continent not only in terms of economic outcomes, but cultural and social outcomes as well. This column, taken from a recently published VoxEU eBook, summarises studies that reveal the lasting toxic effects of Africa's four waves of slave trades on contemporary development.

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Fragile Future project (showing technology and nature relations through dandelions)

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"People find the time to look at art within a gallery setting, but the world is one big exhibition if you only care to look." -Studio Drift, 2017.

The Mint Museum is organizing the first solo museum exhibition outside Europe by Studio Drift, a design group based in the Netherlands that creates breathtaking sculptures that explore the relationship between humanity, nature and technology. Dutch artists Ralph Nauta (b.1978) and Lonneke Gordijn (b.1980) established their studio in 2007, after graduating from the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven. Their work emanates from their distinct, yet complementary and intertwined interests. Whereas Nauta has long been fascinated by science fiction and futuristic thinking, Gordijn has an abiding interest in nature, which she views as more hi-tech than anything humans could create. Accordingly, in bringing their ideas to life, they approach technology from "an intuitive and emotional perspective," as Gordijn puts it, often using it to emulate nature and ultimately to create an emotional experience for the viewer. Frequently new technology must be developed to realize their ideas, requiring ongoing collaborations with scientists, university research facilities, computer programmers, and engineers. Over the years Studio Drift has grown to 20 employees, who manage a busy schedule of commissions, gallery shows, and other projects around the world.

In 2018 the studio had their first solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. They have won numerous international design awards and have participated in group shows such as Design Society at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in 2016 and What is Luxury?, a collaboration between the V&A and the Crafts Council in 2015. Studio Drift's work has been featured at several major design fairs including Design Miami/Basel, Art Paris Art Fair, Dubai Design Week, artmonte-carlo, FOG Design + Art, and ZONA MACO. Their design works and site-specific installations are included in the permanent collections of the Rijksmuseum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, SF MoMA, and others.

This exhibition will feature five works by Studio Drift dating from the last decade to today, most of which have been customized for the Mint, and one installation, Seeds (working title only), premiering here. This blog post is the first in a series that will explore each of the works in the exhibition and offer a behind-the-scenes view of the exhibition's development.

The story of Studio Drift starts with its lighting installation Fragile Future, a network of bronze electrical circuits and dandelion puffs made of LED lights to which dandelion seeds have been individually hand-glued. It is a profound and poetic reflection on the fact that light is the basis and sustenance of all life as well as a testament to the transience of our life and times. Delicate dandelion puffs are the ultimate symbol of ephemerality, yet here they are frozen in time, unable to fulfill their original purpose. Instead, they filter the LED lights and appear to either give power to them or derive power from them.

Fragile Future began as Gordijn's graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven after she noticed the similarity between LED lights and the centers of dandelions and realized that the seeds could be used to filter light. As she told Modern magazine in its spring 2017 issue, "It worked out perfectly and the hard light was spread so organically and softly. This was the first time that I realized that nature and technology did not have to be enemies, but could also be connected with each other and even share a similar size and aesthetic."

After graduating, Gordijn and Nauta, who had been friends since their first days at Eindhoven, founded Studio Drift and developed Fragile Future further. Early versions were individual light fixtures, but the concept soon evolved into modules-just as dandelions are weeds, notorious for spreading everywhere, Fragile Future can expand in any direction. Essentially a three-dimensional circuit board without the board, it can be mounted on walls, hung from a ceiling, or spread across the floor. Lonneke and Ralph describe the development of the work in this video:

Studio Drift showed Fragile Future in 2007 at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, the major international design fair, and immediately received accolades. This success enabled them to show the work at Design Miami the following year, leading to representation by the Paris-based Carpenters Workshop Gallery. A show of Fragile Future by that gallery at the PAD design fair in Paris in 2009 sold out the edition of eight plus four artist's proofs. Since then, Studio Drift have continued making new iterations of Fragile Future while also exploring ever more ambitious ideas in other sculptures, which will be described in upcoming blog posts. Their exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum included the largest installation of Fragile Future to date, shown below; the version shown at The Mint Museum will be of similar size.

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Immersed in Light: Studio Drift at the Mint - The Mint Museum

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"People find the time to look at art within a gallery setting, but the world is one big exhibition if you only care to look." -Studio Drift, 2017. The Mint Museum is organizing the first solo museum exhibition outside Europe by Studio Drift, a design group based in the Netherlands that creates breathtaking sculptures that [...]

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Pavillon anglais for Universal Exhibition at Shanghai

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Le pavillon qui représente le Royaume Uni à l'exposition universelle de Shanghai a été conçu par l'architecte Katerina Dionysopoulou des Studios Heatherwick. Il se situe dans la zone C du site de l'exposition universelle, à proximité de tous les autres pavillons européens.

Son thème: ramener la nature en ville. Le pavillon britannique est un cube illuminé, d'une apparence très simple mais néanmoins fascinante. Des milliers d'épines jaillissent de ce cube lumineux sans avoir aucun support visible avec le sol. Les épines sont colorées par une source lumineuse diffusée pour afficher différentes formes ou images, qui peuvent être modifiées tous les jours ou toutes les semaines.

Toutes les épines vibrent avec la foule des visiteurs. Ce qui veut dire que les visiteurs à l'extérieur du pavillon pourront ressentir l'intensité de l'activité présente à l'intérieur du batiment et connaitre par la diffusion d'images et d'informations les sujets évoqués au sein de la structure. Les intéractions avec le public seront un point clé, les anglais souhaitent que les idées et opinions des visiteurs puissent altérer et changer l'apparence de leur pavillon ainsi que des activités qui s'y déroulent en rendant intéractif les agendas et programmes au fur et à mesure du temps qui passe.

Katerina Dionysopoulou, architecte en chef pour le pavillon britannique, explique qu'il a été imaginé à partir du projet de banque de graines (Millennium Seed Bank) du Jardin botanique royal de Londres qui vise à préserver les plantes menacées de disparition en récoltant les semences. Elle explique sa volonté de faire un pavillon si différent que les gens se dirigeraient vers lui. Pour cela elle a décidé de mettre en capsules toutes les graines comme l'ADN dans l'ambre dans Jurassic Park et de les placer à l'intérieur de tiges d'acrylique de 7,5 m. Pendant la journée, la lumière les fera briller et la nuit, ce sera une petite LED (diode électroluminescente) incorporée.

Un total de 60.000 tiges sortiront d'un cube en bois d'une hauteur de 20 mètres et frémiront en captant la brise du fleuve. Les participants originaires de Grande-Bretagne indiquent que leur plan pour l'Expo a pour finalité de présenter le Royaume-Uni d'aujourd'hui, en tant que nation créative, innovante et technologiquement avancée.

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ARCHITECTURE >>> Pavillon anglais, Katerina Dionysopoulou, Shanghai. - Journal du Design

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Créativité sans limite. Le pavillon qui représente le Royaume Uni à l'exposition universelle de Shanghai a été conçu par l'architecte Katerina Dionysopoulou des Studios Heatherwick. Il se situe dans la zone C du site de l'exposition universelle, à proximité de tous les autres pavillons européens. Son thème: ramener

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This is not just another buy and sell company
We add value by investing back into our industry all the time.

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Frank Lawrence - Douglas - Valor 80 ton/ha

RSA Potato Seed Exchange was founded in 1988 to supply mainly certified seed potatoes and potato pockets to the S.A. potato farmer.

Since then RSA has established itself under the top four related companies in SA and are still gaining market share year by year.

In an effort to maintain and increase our existing market share RSA has invested in more skilled employees, cold storage and depot facilities, and are also continuously sourcing new cultivars globally to stay competitive in the potato industry.

RSA has identified elite seed growers all over SA to grow seed potatoes on contract for RSA and are then supplied to the producers in Southern Africa.

RSA has also contracted through one of his subsidiary companies with Caithness Potato co. in Scotland and Europlant in Germany to import their popular varieties to introduce to the SA market which seems very exciting and promising for the near future as far as yield and resistance to some diseases are concerned.

Taurus Paper Co. are also one of our subsidiary companies and all paper pockets supplied by RSA are manufactured by Taurus and they are well known for their quality bag and outstanding printing.

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RSA | Potato Seed Exchange | Aartappelsaad Beurs

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This is not just another buy and sell company We add value by investing back into our industry all the time. Enquiries - click here to send an email, we will respond asap More information on Subscribe to Newsletter form Receive updates instantly Frank Lawrence - Douglas - Valor 80 ton/ha RSA Potato Seed Exchange was founded in 1988 to supply mainly certified seed potatoes and potato pockets to the S.A.

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Officials are touting the launch of an electronic seed exchange in West Africa as an important step in improving productivity and food security. The online platform will serve seven West African countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Nigeria. The platform is based in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, the leading producer of seeds in the region. Officials hope the new platform will contribute to agricultural productivity. They want to double high-yield seeds from 12 percent in 2012 to 25 percent by 2017. The electronic platform aims to provide an online point of connection for seed producers, traders, distributors, farmers, researchers and other industry stakeholders. In the long run, the platform could help improve the practice of seed quality analysis and the official catalog of seed varieties.
Exchange to boost trade
The platform will help promote the seed trade in the region while fostering healthy competition in the marketplace, said Philip Olusegun Ojo, director general of the Nigerian Agricultural Seeds Council. Ojo noted that about 70 percent of the seeds used by farmers in West Africa are produced in Nigeria. Regulatory changes have boosted the country's seed industry, Ojo said, and today more than 155 seed companies operate in Nigeria. The electronic platform will provide farmers with information on the origin of seeds and their country of availability. The West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development has developed the program in cooperation with the West African Agricultural Productivity Program.
Seeds key to improving a country's agricultural production
Abdou Tenkouano, executive director of the council, said Nigeria has the capacity to supply nearly two-thirds of the farmers in West Africa need. Tenkouano said that the platform was designed to become a hub that will be a precursor to regional research and development initiatives in agriculture. Heineken Lokpobiri, minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said seeds are key to food security in Nigeria, which spends more than $6 billion annually on food imports. "The objective of achieving food security can only be realized through the availability of quality seeds," Lokpobiri said, noting that more companies should be encouraged to enter the seed market as the nation attempts to diversify its agriculture. According to Lokpobiri, the quality of Nigerian seed has improved while production has increased from about 5,000 metric tons in 2007 to 173,000 metric tons in 2015, mostly maize and rice seed. Revenue increased to more than $70 million. "We were able to achieve this success through enhanced collaboration with research institutes, liberalization of foundation seed production, strengthening of the national seed certification, as well as total withdrawal of government agencies from certified seed production and marketing," he said.
Agriculture major occupation
Agriculture is a major sector of the Nigerian economy, engaging more than two thirds of the workforce and accounting for about a third of the nation's gross domestic product. Major food crops include beans, sesame, cashew nuts, cassava, cocoa, maize (corn), millet, rice, soybeans and yams. Small farms that are generally widely scattered produce about 80 percent of the food. More than 75 million acres, about a third of Nigeria's land area, are under cultivation. The new seed exchange platform may help improve constraints highlighted in a report last year that said Nigeria's seed industry was underperforming. The study said the industry was hampered by weak technical capacity, inefficient enforcement of seed laws, information disconnects and lack of capital investment. The report said Nigeria must assure that farmers have access to new varieties of seeds of high quality and at affordable prices. "Unfortunately, the Nigerian seed industry has not fully developed the capacity to perform this role very well."

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West African seed exchange to increase agricultural production - Africa M.E.

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Officials are touting the launch of an electronic seed exchange in West Africa as an important step in improving productivity and food security. The online platform will serve seven West African countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Nigeria.

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Drawing an elephant you've never seen...

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cf: website of the project that started in the 80's

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Le déjeuner sous l'herbe de Daniel Spoerri

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Le 23 avril 1983, l'artiste Daniel Spoerri organise dans les jardins du domaine du Montcel à Jouy-en-Josas un festin baptisé le " Déjeuner sous l'herbe à l'occasion de l'enterrement du tableau-piège ".

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Group 2 - About "We". Sharing and transmission narratives 

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Group 2 - About "We". Sharing and transmission narratives 

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Daniel Spoerri - Déjeuner sous l'herbe.

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List of ideas for the project.

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Unfolding Technology - Artistic frame work

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Unfolding Technology - Artistic frame work

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Navigate through the rapidly changing technological advancements and how we are dealing with it, related to it, respond to it, engaging with it/ in it, function through it, make sense of it, communicate with it,control it or controlled by it.

How can we individually or collectively engage with its endless possibilities and destructions?

General frame work: Technological Effects on We Vs I Culture

SUBJECT:  Come with a specific idea

- Album Covers (Album Wall of our own covers)?

- Artisan vs Technology

- Bing unseen

- Technology and Capitalism

RESOURCES AND TOOLS

- Zoom platform

- Phone

- Camera photo/Video

- Light

- Found objects
- Drone

MEDIUM

- Sound

- Text

- Audio visual

- Mixed media

PRODUCTION

- process

PRESENTATION

- Online

- Individual

- Recorded

- Collective

SUMMMARY OF THE WORKSHOP

- Jeff and Yacob