The study analyses toponymic practices in two colonial spaces on two continents. The colonial spaces, Dakar and Saigon, were capitals of the Federation of French West Africa and French Indochina, respectively. Toponymy is used as a tool to articulate socio-cultural and political power in both spaces; also, streets were christened after French military, politico-administrative and religious personalities. Two differences are noted. First, streets in colonial Saigon were named after French military heroes and clergymen, while streets in Dakar were named after French political luminaries. Second, post-colonial Saigon witnessed efforts to re-appropriate the city’s identity, but not so in Dakar.

The study examines Germano-Anglo colonial towns in Cameroon to determine factors accounting for the scarcity of infrastructure as well as streets and places with Eurocentric names. Using primary and secondary data, it demonstrates that the lack of infrastructure in the polity is a function of negligence by colonial and post-colonial authorities. With few pieces of public infrastructure, the authorities have had few streets and places to attribute names from Eurocentric lexical dictionaries. These findings contribute to knowledge of the relative impact of endogenous and exogenous factors on toponymic traditions as well as inter-country differentials in African countries’ development profiles.