We study the labor market consequences of ethnic politics in African democracies. Using subnational georeferenced data from 15 countries from 1996 to 2017, we compare individuals from ethnicities linked to parties at the margin of electing a representative in the national parliament. Having a local ethnic party politician in parliament increases the likelihood of being employed by 2-3 percentage points. The effect is concentrated in the agricultural sector and mostly driven by self-employment, suggesting increased access to land as the main channel. We also show that religion and age are salient markers in African politics that trigger similar employment effects.

The African people and leaders have long seen education as a driving force of development and liberation, a view shared by international institutions, as schooling has significant economic and non-economic returns, particularly in low-income settings. In this study, we examine the educational progress across faiths throughout post-colonial Africa, home to some of the world's largest Christian and Muslim communities. We construct novel religion-specific measures of intergenerational mobility in education (IM) using census data from more than 2,000 districts in 21 countries and document the following. First, Christians have better mobility outcomes than Traditionalists and Muslims. Second, differences in IM between Christians and Muslims persist among those residing in the same district, in households with comparable economic and family backgrounds. Third, while Muslims benefit as much as Christians when they move early in life to high-mobility regions, they appear less likely to do so. Their low internal mobility accentuates the educational deficit, as Muslims reside in less urbanized, more remote with limited infrastructure areas. Fourth, the Christian-Muslim gap is most prominent in areas with large Muslim communities, where the latter also register the lowest emigration rates. As African governments and international organizations invest heavily in educational programs, our findings highlight the need to understand better the private and social returns to schooling across faiths in religiously segregated communities and carefully think about religious inequalities in the take-up of educational policies.

We examine intergenerational mobility (IM) in educational attainment in Africa since independence using census data. First, we map IM across 27 countries and more than 2,800 regions, documenting wide cross-country and especially within-country heterogeneity. Inertia looms large as differences in the literacy of the old generation explain about half of the observed spatial disparities in IM. The rural-urban divide is substantial. Though conspicuous in some countries, there is no evidence of systematic gender gaps in IM. Second, we characterize the geography of IM, finding that colonial investments in railroads and Christian missions, as well as proximity to capitals and the coastline are the strongest correlates. Third, we ask whether the differences in mobility across regions reflect spatial sorting or the independent role of the former. To isolate the two, we focus on children whose families moved when they were young. Comparing siblings, looking at moves triggered by displacement shocks, and using historical migrations to predict moving-families’ destinations, we establish that, while selection is considerable, regional exposure effects are at play. An extra year spent in a high-mobility region before the age of 12 (and after 5) significantly raises the likelihood for children of uneducated parents to complete primary school. Overall, the evidence suggests that geographic and historical factors laid the seeds for spatial disparities in IM that are cemented by sorting and the independent impact of regions.

I combine georeferenced data on mining and oil endowments with satellite-images of land use and census data on 112 million individuals from 2,700 regions in 23 countries to show that resource extraction and international trade have fuelled Africa's recent structural transformation. In the first part of my analysis, I document that both increases in the values of regional natural resource endowments, induced by global price shocks, as well as a U.S. policy change, lowering tariffs on African imports, which affected regions close to ports more strongly, lead to reallocations away from agriculture towards services. The natural resource and trade shocks are re-enforcing in their effect on agriculture and services, but neither crowds out manufacturing employment, which even expands in response to the trade shock. In the second part of the analysis, I develop and then calibrate a quantitative multi-region multi-industry trade model of structural transformation. There are two forces at play. Increases of local incomes in mining regions increase the demand for non-tradables whereas reduced external trade costs, by lowering the prices of tradable goods, favour locations better connected to international markets. I find the correlation between model-predicted and observed labour share changes to be around 55 percent. Which of the two forces dominate in explaining observed structural transformation depends on the spatial configuration of location-specific access to international markets and natural resource advantages. The analysis concludes with counterfactual simulations of the structural change implications of larger resource booms and autarky.