ABSTRACT
A generation ago the economic history of sub-Saharan Africa was shaken by the increasingly successful adaptation of dependency theory, with its platform in the experience of Latin America, to the African continent by writers such as Claude Ake, Colin Leys, Rhoda Howard and, above all, Samir Amin. (Ake 1981, Leys 1975, Howard 1978, Amin 1971) While there are some problems in making this adaptation work, it is certainly true that dependency theory in the cold light of day exposed the economic vision operative in European colonialism in Africa. The metropole and the colony were profoundly distinctive entities. The metropole retained financial autonomy and power, and was the seat of manufacture, research and innovation. The purpose of the colony was to provide raw materials, absorb export production and control strategic points. It might also, as in the case of the French empire, provide manpower for the metropolitan military. There were occasionally colonies that, in a world where free trade still had some purchase, traded primarily elsewhere than with the metropole, but these were problematic exceptions. It was true that Lenin’s view that colonies were above all targets for investment is not very close to African historical reality. Such investment only worked where particular infrastructural projects or unusual resource troves could be found, such as the Suez Canal or the gold fields of South Africa.
