After my reading of Maddison book, I can make extrapolate some of Maddison view to the French and British former colonies in Africa. I see that the way Maddison made the difference between Spain in Mexico and British colonies in America is the same comparing British and French colonies in Africa. To illustrate what I do want to say, I will take two countries, Burkina Faso (French colony) and Ghana (British colony).
The French colony, Burkina Faso, was very similar to Spanish colonies. The country had few resources and a considerable part of the income was for the colonizer.
The English colony, Ghana, has had a very good education emphasized on pragmatic skill, which was not the case of the education in Burkina Faso. Also this colony has had greater intellectual freedom than Burkina Faso.
From these facts, I can think that the Spanish and French colonies are similar, and British colonies were almost running in the same way.