ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ideology of race in European ethos. It contends that racial residential segregation policies in colonial Africa were a function of the race ideology that dominated the discourse on human relations in the West in the early-nineteenth century. A common feature of colonial towns in Africa, from Dakar to Mogadishu and from Cairo to Cape Town, was their racially segregated spatial structure. However, it is important to note that racial segregation did not become official policy in the region until the 1900s subsequent to the development of the race ideology. The ideology of race developed especially in Western Europe and Northern America in the period leading up to the onset of the formal European colonial era in Africa. The socio-economic development implications of racially segregated spatial structures in Africa are discussed here in two segments. The chapter focuses on the colonial period while the second concentrates on the post-colonial era.
