German colonies like Togo and Kamerun with more tropical climates had even smaller European communities.
The large settler population shaped South West Africa’s development and had a direct effect on the employment opportunities for educated natives. Middle and lower level positions in colonial administration and other jobs which required literacy and a degree of education were largely occupied by whites.  Of the Africans who finished school, few were able to find employment and actually put their educations to use. Teaching in missionary schools was one of the more common occupations for educated Africans. The mixed-race population, known as coloureds or Mischlinge, had more opportunities for jobs than pure Africans but were still generally restricted to artisan labor and very limited work in colonial administration. 
The labor market in East Africa offered greater opportunities for educated Africans and Mischlinge. Because the settler population was much smaller both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the total population, the colonial government sought to develop a literate class of Africans to fill positions in lower administration. Africans were also significantly cheaper to employ than Europeans, further motivating their recruitment by the cash-strapped government. The need for loyal native subjects led to the development of state schools, as missionary-educated Africans could possess conflicting loyalties if they had attended schools run by foreign missionaries.
The different opportunities for educated Africans in the two colonies manifest themselves in their respective educational systems, which differed greatly in size, composition, and scope. East Africa boasted 984 schools for natives in 1911, including 80 government schools, compared with only 88 total in South West Africa, all run by missionaries.  Schools in South West Africa also focused primarily on handiworks and “practical” skills for natives, while those in East Africa offered more specialized and higher-level education including technical schools for industrial training and high schools with more advanced curricula.
In contrast with the system of native education in South West Africa, education for Europeans was highly developed and heavily supported by the government. While the German government spent 329,500 Marks on white education in 1914–1915, only 9,000 Marks were spent annually on education for Africans and Mischlinge.
Besides the limited employment opportunities for natives in South West Africa, Cohen asserts that settler attitudes also influenced education policy. Settlers protested government funding for native education and resented native competition for jobs. Their opposition resulted in several vocational programs for natives to be scaled back or eliminated.
Cohen’s work identifies the settler population and the lack of economic opportunity for educated natives as the reasons for the limited development of native education in South West Africa, but does not focus on these factors or try to explain further underlying issues which influenced settler attitudes and the formation of the economic system in South West Africa. New research on the relationship of European attitudes to natives and colonial policy sheds light on these issue and can be applied to the question of education policy as well. 