Indigenous Origins of Institutions in SubSaharan Africa

By analysing the institutional structures of indigenous sub‐Saharan African groups, this paper aims to highlight the effect that these institutions may have had, and continue to have, on contemporary institutional performance. Using ethnographic and anthropological data sources a set of variables are created that attempt to capture the institutional characteristics of indigenous African groups. These newly created variables aim to proxy for the deeper, underlying determinants of current institutions and are shown to be complementary to existing measure of institutional quality.