In 1914, which African Colonies were profitable?

Prior to World War One, which of the European Colonies were profitable, which weren't, and which were settler colonies where profit didn't matter as much?
 
Africa was generally the worse I know vs the Asian colonies, all the infrastructure had to be built up:

I know Togo was profitable (the only German colony that was). Although other German colonies were close like South West Africa with the Diamond Rush. The Germans wanted to push railways all the way to Lake Chad in Kamerun and into the highly populated Rwanda area in East Africa so these would be soon.

The Katanga copper mines in the Belgian Congo were highly valued, not sure of the profitability of the Congo as a whole.

Few Sub Saharan colonies were settler at the time (except South Africa which was independent by then). Euros had to go to highlands or semi arid places to be healthy.

Although if WW1 didn't happen, the advent of air conditioning and anti malaria drugs, and continued improvements in shipping, and more Euro population not dead means more European settlement than OTL. Probably by 1934 almost everywhere would have been profitable and with significant settler percentages.
 
For the Belgians the congo profitable for them but only because of the lengths they were willing to go to get a profit in a high expense area (nightmare fuel that would scar the Nazis) For British colonies just based on natural resources Nigeria(oil), Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe could have the potential for long-term profitability if they were not already. Across the board, the smaller ivory coast coloys did alright for all colonizers some were meh while others like Togo did great. Here are two maps of metal mining for reference (one simplified and one detailed)
simplified
7c47c930cf72a6553f6ba140e400bd4a.jpg

detailed
Simplified_world_mining_map_1.png
 
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The pattern of imperial control pre-1914 appears to have little relationship to the economic patterns of trade and investment across the world. The colonies weren't crucial outlets for the investors of their respective european colonizers, and the competition for colonies and investment does not seem to have contributed to WW1.

The geography of European capital exports 1870-1914
...And it’s true. Colonies may have been acquired and exploited, but they were not the primary destination for the capital exports of the Great Powers. Far from it. The “external investment outlet for the surplus savings” of France and Germany was overwhelmingly Europe, the United States, and Latin America. These regions accounted for ~80% of cumulative French and German investments, with Europe dominant. For the UK, less than 20% of the total went to the so-called ‘dependent colonies’, a category which excludes the rich self-governing ‘white dominions’ which are obviously not part of the Global South today. Most of the 80% of British foreign investment took place in North America, Argentina, and Australasia.

...Germany’s foreign investment as a share of national saving was falling in the decades before the Great War. French capital exports were rising and the share going to Africa had a modest upward trend, but, in apparent contradiction of the Hobson-Lenin thesis, they were going into the ‘wrong’ colonies — South Africa and British-controlled Egypt !...

...Both British India and Egypt (under the British protectorate) exported raw cotton to Britain’s competitors in textile manufacturing such as Germany, France, and later Japan. Japan started industrialisation partly with Indian cotton and, especially after 1918, exported cotton textiles to British India itself. I thought all this was now generally known with that extraordinary piece of imperialist apologia, Sven Beckert’s The Empire of Cotton, which states: “By 1910, only 6 percent of Indian cotton exports went to Great Britain, while Japan consumed 38 percent, and continental Europe 50 percent”...
 

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The problem with the maps you are showing is that they're not from the time period with what was available then, say 1910. I know as I've looked for these types of resource maps and they are very difficult to find. I have found some of the best info comes from old encyclopedia sets from the time period. I bought a 1935 set of Britannica quite a few years ago. I really like the info you have about economic investment though. That's one I haven't seen before.
 

Tyr Anazasi

Banned
There were two colonies, which were profitable for Germany, Samoa and Togo. Likely, with more time, even other colonies could be profitable.
 
Your question could be better phrased IMHO in two parts.

1) Did the revenues accruing to the owning state (metropole) come to more than the expense of running the colony, and defending it?

2) Did private investors from this metropole make money from it?

The obvious answer to (2) is yes, or they wouldn't bother. Though clearly some enterprises could be so badly run as to make a loss, collectively British firms made profits from British colonies (and other countries like Argentina) and ditto for German, French, Dutch ones.

(1) is trickier. It ought to be easy to make an estimate at the cost of administering a colony from British records (or those of any other Imperial power) then compare this total to direct revenues from that colony. However, what share of Imperial Defence expenditure should you allocate to it? Countering this, British firms profits from it are taxable as are the earnings and spending of their employees in the UK. There's also mu;yip;her effects and profits from things like shipping and sale of goods to the colonies. So overall economic profit could be positive even if the direct costs/revenue equation looks bad.

A jolly game for accountants but a bit boring for economists like me.

My gut feel is that few Sub-Saharan African colonies were financially profitable pre-WW!, except from looting as in the Belgian Congo. South Africa might be the exception and ones that could become economically profitable with investment include Kenya, Rhodesia and Ghana. I'm probably missing some French or German ones though from lack of knowledge of them.
 
All of them, it's just thst the profits went to private companies and individuals rather than to the government, I imagine. I mean, in today's world, lots of multinational corporations benefit from the cheap raw materials they get from Africa, so I imagine that if they are profiting today, they must have profited then.
 
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