Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/242675 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
African Economic History Working Paper Series No. 46/2019
Publisher: 
African Economic History Network (AEHN), s.l.
Abstract: 
This study adds the case of a Belgian colony to a literature that has mainly focused on differences in school enrollment between French and British African territories. While most studies emphasize the supply- side, especially the constraints on missionary activity, we highlight the role of demand from the colonial mining industry. We use various primary sources to assess quantitatively and qualitatively the development of school enrollment in the Congo since 1920. We show that the regional inequality in education that crystallized in colonial times persisted decades after independence. The provincial disparities are used as a point of departure to explain how the mining industry worked as a catalyst for the expansion of primary school enrolment. The paternalistic policy of "stabilization", i.e. of permanent settlement of workers and their families near the work sites, introduced by the Union Minière du Haut Katanga as well as by most concessionary companies in the Belgian Congo in the mid-1920s, went hand in hand with high investments in primary schooling. The aim of the industry was to save expenses on recruitment and European labour, and to make investments in miners' and their children's education profitable.
Subjects: 
Education
colonial Africa
the Congo
regional inequality
JEL: 
N27
N37
N47
N57
N97
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
940.58 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.