The LongTerm Effects of the Printing Press in SubSaharan Africa

Julia Cage (1) , Valeria Rueda (1)

1 ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po)

This article delves into the relationship between newspaper readership and civic attitudes, and its effect on economic development. To this end, we investigate the long-term consequences of the introduction of the printing press in the 19th century. In sub-Saharan Africa, Protestant missionaries were the first both to import the printing press technology and to allow the indigenous population to use it. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant missions in 1903. This dataset includes, for each mission station, the geographic location and its characteristics, as well as the educational and health-related investments undertaken by the mission. We show that, within regions located close to missions, proximity to a printing press significantly increases newspaper readership today. We also document a strong association between proximity to a printing press and contemporary economic development. Our results are robust to a variety of identification strategies.

Keywords: economic development; historical persistence; printing press; Protestant missions; newspaper readership; political participation

Domains: Economics and Finance

Julia Cage, Valeria Rueda. The LongTerm Effects of the Printing Press in SubSaharan Africa. 2014. ⟨hal-01071879⟩