In 1482 the Portuguese established the first permanent European settlement in sub-Saharan Africa at Elmina on the Gold Coast. During the next four centuries European powers created trading posts, mission stations, and colonies in many parts of the continent. This chapter describes the measures they took to care for the poor, both European and African. Unlike previous chapters, this is concerned less with the identity of the poor than with provision for them.

In contrast to the legend that pre-colonial Africa had no poor, European rulers and merchants were generally concerned to avoid being over-whelmed by them. This they attempted by introducing poor relief institutions from their own countries, so that sub-Saharan Africa – itself so lacking in formal institutions – now experienced early modern Europe's diverse approaches to poverty. These institutions were already designed to exclude all but the most deserving. In Africa the filter was even more rigorous lest embryonic services be swamped. Occasionally this parsimony was relieved by private philanthropy. Often it coexisted with a more generous benevolence practised by missionaries, especially by the sisterhoods which during the nineteenth century brought a new quality of charity to the African continent.

The fort at Elmina does not appear to have provided for the poor. Its hospital was ‘staffed by two to three Portuguese female nurses, a male attendant, a physician, a barber-bloodletter, and an apothecary’, but its inmates were mainly Portuguese troops and sailors.