It is often assumed that significant differences existed between Great Britain and France with regards to their respective styles of colonial administration. Some researchers have asserted that this difference in colonial administration has affected post-colonial economic and political development in Africa. This paper offers some theoretical, anecdotal, and econometric evidence questioning the validity of these assumptions. This paper also examines some commonly encountered problems associated with econometric analyses of African development: namely, the availability and reliability of data, and the difficulty in operationalizing and measuring political development in Africa.