Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331394 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
African Economic History Working Paper Series No. 84
Publisher: 
African Economic History Network (AEHN), s.l.
Abstract: 
Markets for millet and rice in the Western Sudan became much more integrated over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on a new dataset of prices from across French West African colonies, this paper documents that price dispersion as measured by the coefficient of variation roughly halved from 1915 to 1940. Estimates of route-specific freight prices suggest that much of the decline in price gaps can be attributed to falling transport costs due to the introduction of mechanized transport. A market-supportive legacy of precolonial state-building, and particularly the Islamist states of the Fulani jihads and the Wassulu Empire of Samory Touré is also evident in the price data.
Subjects: 
market integration
West Africa
grain markets
grain prices
JEL: 
N17
N77
ISBN: 
978-91-981477-9-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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