A Place-Based Approach to Sustainable Communities: A Case Study from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

This study seeks to interrogate the motives, challenges, complexities and contribution of the transportation infrastructure to the socio-economic development of the colonial government of Nigeria between 1900 and 1960. Although a lot of literature exists on the contribution of transportation to the Nigerian colonial economy, yet, there has been no serious attempt to investigate the resistance to British demands which hurt the colonizer and of African initiatives to improve their socio-economic conditions through the transportation infrastructure. The impression is often created of a completely submissive colonial population simply complying with the colonial government instructions and demands for their produce, yet findings revealed that there were challenges and obstacles to the smooth-running of a result-oriented economic policy. The basic objective of this paper is to empirically articulate the extent to which the colonial transportation infrastructure was able to fulfill the motives/impact of these efforts to the socio-economic development and well-being of Nigerians at this period. Another objective of the work is to throw more light on the extent to which these infrastructures (transport) were able to promote or negate the interests and development of the colonial government of Nigeria. The study utilized both primary and secondary data and employed the simple descriptive analysis of the materials through the historical methodology. The work adopted the Solow Neo-classical Growth theory which attempted to measure the extent to which labor, capital and technology were able to influence the economic growth of Nigeria. On the whole, the work concluded that despite the claims of the British government of achieving the ‘dual mandate’ policy of ascertaining that commercial interests of both the home country Britain and the colony were guaranteed, yet to a greater extent the colonial government benefitted more to the disadvantage of the colony whose development was only marginal during this period.