Colonial Legacies of Social Policies: Concession Economies in the UN Middle Africa Subregion

The francophone and especially the iberophone countries of the UN subregion Middle Africa are largely ignored in the growing literature on the historical legacy of contemporary social policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a historical sociology approach this paper is interested in exploring the social services and schemes of colonial concession economies and their post-colonial legacy. It presents a multiple case study of the Middle African concession economies of the DRC, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé e Príncipe (STP). The comparison of these four cases reveals a particularity of concession economies: Labour scarcity, Africans’ resistance strategies and unfavourable international reports pressed concession companies to gradually improve social services. What happened outside these pockets depended on the policy of the colonial administration. At the end of colonial rule, these concession economies generally provided more social services to their African populations than cash-crop economies and labour reserves. However, the quality of these services and schemes generally declined after independence and there was a quite pronounced reversal of social political fortunes.