State Expansion in Contemporary Africa: Evidence from Satellite Imagery

• In Event: Remote Sensing and the Political Economy of Development

Abstract

Two tenets pervade research on the reach of African states and their services. First, state infrastructure is perennially sparse in rural hinterlands. Second, leaders narrowly funnel public goods into co-ethnic regions. But there are few comprehensive and granular empirical assessments of these tenets, since there is a dearth of data in regions of limited state presence. This paper documents African state expansion by applying machine learning methods to sixty terabytes of satellite imagery, identifying and dating the construction of government schools and clinics in a quarter million rural African villages over the past thirty-five years. The findings from this panel dataset challenge conventional wisdom. While subnational disparities in the presence of public infrastructure remain, historically neglected regions are "catching up" in virtually every country. Further, leaders' ethnic homelands do not receive disproportionate numbers of public facilities. These results suggest a need to reformulate the politics of state expansion in Africa.

Author

• Jamie Hintson, Stanford Univeristy