The theory of pecuniary coalition formation suggests that the central problem for today’s opposition politicians is the fact that business cannot freely serve as a campaign financier in many African countries. This chapter examines the historical origins of this dynamic. I argue that two features of the late colonial period – the position of the state in mediating access to capital and the role of resources in mobilizing nationalist campaigns – shaped the relationship between politicians and entrepreneurs over subsequent decades. These features provided Africa’s post-independence leaders with the capacity and motivation to create financial reprisal regimes, that is, to transform the access to financial capital into a privilege that could be extended or withdrawn at a leader’s discretion.

I present in this chapter a narrative that reinterprets the historical record to highlight the interest of African leaders in suppressing the ability of business to act politically. While standard accounts of the late colonial period emphasize the role of the “new men” – Western-educated clerks, lawyers, and teachers – in leading the nationalist cause across Africa (e.g., Kilson 1970; Lloyd 1966), indigenous entrepreneurs also “constituted a major force in the rise of nationalism” (Markovitz 1977, 232). Indigenous entrepreneurs forged close ties with nationalist politicians as they sought to advance their respective interests vis-à-vis the colonial state. Just as entrepreneurs required political intervention in order to expand their restricted participation in commerce, politicians needed resources to build the movements they hoped would one day take control of the state. Merchants and traders played a crucial linkage function in this respect: they facilitated the coordination of nationalist parties across ethnic, linguistic, and regional cleavages. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who led one of Nigeria’s first nationalist parties, made this relationship explicit when addressing his party’s annual convention in 1957: “If some of us had not accumulated wealth in the dim and distant decade when the oppressor was in his heyday, it would have been impossible to found this great Party, and it would have been an idle dream to achieve the measure of political success that has come our way” (quoted in Sklar 1963, 230).