Authors
Ewout Frankema and Felix Meier zu Selhausen
Abstract
We create a novel commodity trade database to trace Africa’s mineral transition across 1850-2020. How did the growth of mineral exports affect (pre-)colonial specialisation in tropical cash-crops, the mainstay of millions of African smallholders? We show that the mining sector benefitted from relatively favourable terms of trade, but primarily after 1998. Contrary to standard ‘resource curse’ arguments, export agriculture did not decline because of mineral export-induced crowding-out, but rather due to political violence and fiscal predation. Yet, the probability of recovery of export agriculture after collapse appears to be strongly mediated by the presence or absence of minerals.