ABSTRACT
The ability of African societies to invigorate their private sector and to promote capitalist development should be set within a historical framework. In particular, observers should look at Africa's colonial experience with a view to determining whether this crucial era in Africa's history helped to lay firm foundations for a vigorous private sector. This chapter examines the historical evolution of the private sector under colonial rule and to focus on the indigenous or African position within that sector. It aims to understand how relatively little articulated the private sector was during the colonial period, how monopolized it was by a few powerful European firms, and how subordinate the African participation in it was. There are many ways to approach the study of the private sector under colonialism. In the nineteenth century, especially along the coast of West Africa, the private sector had its fullest flowering in precolonial times.
