I've been told that the Portuguese poured cement down the toilets in Angola, for instance, so the Angolans would have to build and/or repair sewerage systems.
I can't speak to Angola, but in Guinea the result of their "non" vote to remaining a French satellite in 1958 was definitely this. The French unceremoniously pulled out all investment, aid (including pensions for Guinean WWII veterans), trade preference, and what infrastructure they could (including phones, typewriters, and by some accounts even chairs and tables). Elizabeth Schmidt's Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946-1958 (2007) goes into some of this, although my copy is at the office so I can't give you page numbers (mostly chapter 6, if memory serves). The result was that Nkrumah's Ghana stepped in with aid, and of course so did the Soviet bloc, which immediately put the US on edge and put the French on notice that the old punitive model could not work the same way anymore.
[edit: I should point out that I answered this as "colonialists" not just "colonists"--it would be interesting to hear about actual settlers' actions as opposed to those of government in places like Angola, Algeria, Kenya, and so forth.]