Abstract
This study examines the correlational relationship between the historical playing of indigenous strategic board games (also called mancala) and the socio-economic complexity of African ethnic groups as well as the incidence of entrepreneurial pursuits. Anthropology literature suggests that these games may be associated with socio-economic complexity of the ethnic groups—the so-called games in culture hypothesis. I revisit this hypothesis with better data and motivated by anecdotal evidence, introduce a contemporary hypothesis, origins of entrepreneurship hypothesis—that descendants of societies that played complex mancala games are more likely to be engaged in non-farm self-employment today. I compile the first comprehensive database of mancala games in Africa matched to ancestral characteristics data, and for 18 African countries, to the Afrobarometer survey data. Using historical and contemporary data, I do not find evidence for either hypothesis. Despite the null results, I explore how related hypotheses and studies can build on the comprehensive mancala database.
Highlights
A growing literature in economics investigates the short run and long run effects of culture on economic development
This study examines the correlational relationship between the historical playing of indigenous strategic board games and the socio-economic complexity of African ethnic groups as well as the incidence of entrepreneurial pursuits
In contrast to the game in culture hypothesis, these results show that societies that play complex two row or four row mancala games are even more likely to be those with less levels of jurisdiction beyond the local community
Summary
A growing literature in economics investigates the short run and long run effects of culture on economic development (see a review of this literature by Nunn [1]). The correlational analyses that confirmed the hypothesis [13, 32,33,34, 16] were based on classifying ethnic groups into those that played strategic games and whether their political and economic organization were complex (i.e., political jurisdiction was beyond community and settlement patterns were complex) This approach did not control for other characteristics of the societies including their location, distance to coast, migration and religious beliefs; nor did it take into consideration the varying complexity and rules of games of strategy. Playing complex mancala games gives them the comparative advantage at non-farm self-employment as compared to their counterparts from less complex mancala playing societies
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