"At independence, the Central African Republic suffered from an enormous handicap"

Text by: Laurent Correau Follow

5 mins

The Central African Republic is celebrating 60 years of its independence. From the outset, the country had difficulties to make the administration work for lack of elites. How to explain this lack of frameworks, of almost everything, of schools, roads, bridges. For the historian Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch, it is the consequence of the type of colonization implemented in French Equatorial Africa in general and more particularly in the colony of Oubangui Chari, the colonial name of the Central African Republic. A colonization in which the country was entrusted to French concessionary companies very poorly supervised.

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Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, when the Central African Republic obtained its independence on August 13, 1960, did she leave with a starting handicap ?

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch: In my opinion, a huge handicap and which dates back a very long time. I think it is one of the regions of Africa that has suffered the most for the longest time. The Central African Republic was during the time of the Oubangui-Chari colonization and it was an intermediate zone between the Sahel and the forest which suffered from the slave trade. In the 19th century, you had the empire of Rabah, great conqueror, he was very slavery. So it was an area that was already ravaged when the French arrived. Subsequently, it was not better in a way, because on the one hand the French colonization was non-existent for a very long time and on the other hand it preferred, especially in this very remote area, to cede the territory. to enormous private companies, to forty private companies for all of what would become French Equatorial Africa, and in particular a company with a sad reputation which was called the Compagnie des Sultanats du Haut-Oubangui.

And how will this company manage the territory that has been entrusted to it ?

It had the monopoly of the ivory harvest, that is to say in reality of the confiscation of the ivory treasures accumulated by the chiefs and of the exploitation of liana rubber, that is to say to impose to what were called "the natives" at the time to bring latex collected in the forest for absolutely ridiculous sums. And as it was very poorly controlled by the administration, these private individuals engaged in abuses that were somewhat comparable to those which took place in Leopold's Congo, the future Belgian Congo.

The Central African Republic at the time was therefore left to the concessionary companies. We imagine that this does not encourage investments in infrastructure, in schools in this Oubangui Chari?

Precisely, the concessionary companies were created by the State so that it would be the private ones who made the investments that the Parliament did not want to vote for this very distant, unknown colony for which everything had to be done. We needed bridges, we needed tracks, we needed buildings, a solid infrastructure in order to be able, as we said at the time, to “put the colony into operation”. Parliament did not want to vote the appropriations. So, the idea was to say: we divide the whole of Equatorial Africa into forty concessionary companies for thirty years who will make the investments in our place. Only, it was commercial companies that were looking to make immediate profits for their shareholders. So they made excessively few investments. It was a terrible idea. The French government noticed this very quickly. Only the concessions had been obtained, they were thirty years old and the State negotiated to remove them one after the other.

In the years preceding independence, did the French authorities undertake work that had not been done by the concessionary companies?

Yes of course. Because, with the Brazzaville conference, it became clear what we already knew, but did not realize for lack of money, that we had to invest. We had to build infrastructures. France had to invest so that these countries could develop. And this was the creation of what was called Fides in 1946-1947 (Investment Fund for Economic and Social Development). But it's late ... it was the first time that the metropolis admitted the idea that it could finance something in the colonies.

What was most lacking in the country when it gained its independence, were they infrastructure, schools, qualified staff ?

I would say that what was essentially lacking were qualified executives because the school had been very insufficient. People by inheritance greatly feared the state. They did not want to send their children to school, because it was to come to terms with the occupier in short. So at the time of independence, you had very few executives who could take the place. So a few senior executives like Barthélemy Boganda [founding father of the nation, who died before independence], but hardly any middle executives who are very important in making the administrative machine work. So French cooperation was essential, everything that was lacking was replaced by French personnel, former colonial officials who very often became cooperative.

► To read also:

Central African Republic: “Oubanguiens generation”, the last to bear the memory of independence

Guest Africa: Central African Republic: "The results of independence are very mixed"

African Independence: Between recklessness and hopes, having 10 years of independence in the Central African Republic

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• Anniversary of African Independence
• Central African Republic