Contemporary corruption in Africa does not result from spontaneous emergence but is rooted in the continuity of a political and administrative order inherited from colonization. This article demonstrates that colonial powers established governance systems where public good capture was not a deviation but the normal functioning mode. Through comparative analysis of French, Belgian and British colonial models, the study reveals how each metropole developed specific mechanisms for extracting African resources while moralizing this predation through civilizing discourse. French centralization created "slush funds" systems; Belgian administration established brutal extraction; British "indirect rule" instrumentalized local chiefs as corruption relays. Far from being eradicated at independence, these structures were appropriated by postcolonial elites who perpetuated capture logics while adopting nationalist discourse. This historical analysis establishes that African corruption is not a cultural phenomenon but the product of colonial administrative engineering that deliberately organized public patrimony's availability for private capture. Understanding these roots is essential to conceiving structural solutions that break with this inherited order rather than merely moralizing individual behaviors.
Armand Salouo (Mon,) studied this question.