The long Term Effects of the Printing Press in Sub Saharan Africa

Cagé, Julia; Rueda, Valeria

The long Term Effects of the Printing Press in Sub Saharan Africa

Abstract: This article delves into the relationship between newspaper readership and civic attitudes, and its e↵ect 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: Historical persistence; Printing press; Protestant missions; Newspaper readership; Political participation; Economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00844446v2
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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