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Obstacles to progress

Distortions

“ In particular, we show that the diversity of investments brought by Christian
missionaries to the region had different, and sometimes conflicting, effects on long-term

development.
***
In 19th century sub-Saharan Africa, missions invested in numerous activities, amongst
which were education, health care and printing. Protestant missionaries pioneered the

development of a written tradition for sub-Saharan African languages. Wherever they
went, Protestants quickly formalised indigenous languages and printed Bibles and
educational material in these languages. They facilitated access to the printing press,

acting as intermediaries for its diffusion. Therefore, most of the first indigenous
newspapers were printed and sponsored at mission centres.

The first newspaper intended for black readers, the Umshumayeli Wendaba ('Publishers
of the News'), written in Xhosa, was published as an irregular quarterly in 1837 and

printed at the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Cape Colony. Isigidimi samaXhosa ('The
Xhosa Messenger'), the first African newspaper edited by Africans, was first released in
1876 and printed at the Lovedale Mission Press in South Africa. In 1884, the

English/Xhosa weekly Imvo Zabantsundu ('The African Opinion'), the first black-owned
and controlled newspaper in South Africa, was published. On the contrary, in regions

where Protestant missions were less active, the first newspapers appeared only at the
beginning of the 20th century, and no indigenous newspapers were created before WWI.
The first paper in Ivory Coast to be owned and edited by an African, the Éclaireur de la

Cote d'Ivoire, only appeared in 1935.
***
Using contemporary individual-level data from the Afrobarometer, we find that proximity

to the closest location of a mission with a printing press has a robust, positive, and
statistically significant impact on civic attitudes and social capital, such as media
consumption (newspaper readership) and trust (consistent with the hypothesis formed

by historians of sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Omu 1978 and Tudesq 1995).
***
Moreover, the early Christian provision of health care persisted after colonisation and is
particularly influential in the design of health care in poor countries (Idler 2014).

On the other hand, health investments are not the only way through which missionary
activity may have affected the propagation of HIV/AIDS. Christian values also affect
sexually transmitted diseases and there is quantitative and historical evidence that