Decolonisation of Africa

An animated map shows the order of independence of African nations, 1950–2011.

The decolonisation of Africa took place in the mid-to-late 1950s and 1960s, with sudden and radical regime changes on the continent as colonial governments made the transition to independent states; this was often quite unorganized and marred with violence and political turmoil. There was widespread unrest and organized revolts in both Northern and sub-Saharan colonies, especially in French Algeria, Portuguese Angola, the Belgian Congo and British Kenya.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Background[edit]

European control in 1939

Belgian	Italian
British	Portuguese
French	Spanish
Independent

The "Scramble for Africa" between 1870 and 1900 ended with almost all of Africa being controlled by a small number of European states. Racing to secure as much land as possible while avoiding conflict amongst themselves, the partition of Africa was confirmed in the Berlin Agreement of 1885, with little regard to local differences.^[6][7] By 1905, control of almost all African soil was claimed by Western European governments, with the only exceptions being Liberia (which had been settled by African-American former slaves) and Ethiopia (then occupied by Italy in 1936).^[8] Britain and France had the largest holdings, but Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal also had colonies; as a result of colonialism and imperialism, a majority of Africa lost sovereignty and control of natural resources such as gold and rubber. The introduction of imperial policies surfacing around local economies led to the failing of local economies due to an exploitation of resources and cheap labor.^[9] Progress towards independence was slow up until the mid-20th century. By 1977, 54 African countries had seceded from European colonial rulers.^[10]

Causes[edit]

External causes[edit]

During the world wars, African soldiers were conscripted into imperial militaries;^[11] this led to a deeper political awareness and the expectation of greater respect and self-determination, which was left largely unfulfilled.^[12] During the 1941 Atlantic Conference, the British and the US leaders met to discuss ideas for the post-war world. One of the provisions added by President Roosevelt was that all people had the right to self-determination, inspiring hope in British colonies.^[10]

On February 12, 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss the postwar world. The result was the Atlantic Charter,^[13] it was not a treaty and was not submitted to the British Parliament or the Senate of the United States for ratification, but it turned to be a widely acclaimed document.^[14] One of the provisions, introduced by Roosevelt, was the autonomy of imperial colonies. After World War II, the US and the African colonies put pressure on Britain to abide by the terms of the Atlantic Charter. After the war, some Britons considered African colonies to be childish and immature; British colonisers introduced democratic government at local levels in the colonies. Britain was forced to agree but Churchill rejected universal applicability of self-determination for subject nations, he also stated that the Charter was only applicable to German occupied states, not to the British Empire.^[10]

Furthermore, colonies such as Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana pushed for self-governance as colonial powers were exhausted by war efforts.^[15]

Internal causes[edit]

For early African nationalists, decolonization was a moral imperative. In 1945 the Fifth Pan-African Congress demanded the end of colonialism. Delegates included future presidents of Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and national activists.^[16]

Colonial economic exploitation led to European extraction of Ghana’s mining profits to shareholders, instead of internal development, causing major local socioeconomic grievances.^[17] Nevertheless, local African industry and towns expanded when U-boats patrolling the Atlantic Ocean reduced raw material transportation to Europe.^[10] In turn, urban communities, industries and trade unions grew, improving literacy and education, leading to pro-independence newspaper establishments.^[10]

Indeed, in the 1930s, the colonial powers had cultivated, sometimes inadvertently, a small elite of leaders educated in Western universities and familiar with ideas such as self-determination. In some cases where the road to independence was fought, settled arrangements with the colonial powers were also being placed;^[9] these leaders came to lead the struggles for independence, and included leading nationalists such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Gold Coast, now Ghana), Julius Nyerere (Tanganyika, now Tanzania), Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria), and Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Côte d'Ivoire).^{[citation needed]}

Economic legacy[edit]

The economic legacy of colonialism is difficult to quantify but is likely to have been negative. Modernisation theory emphasises that colonial powers built infrastructure to integrate Africa into the world economy, however, this was built mainly for extraction purposes. African economies were structured to benefit the coloniser and any surplus was likely to be ‘drained’, thereby stifling capital accumulation.^[18] Dependency theory suggests that most African economies continued to occupy a subordinate position in the world economy after independence with a reliance on primary commodities such as copper in Zambia and tea in Kenya.^[19] Despite this continued reliance and unfair trading terms, a meta-analysis of 18 African countries found that a third of countries experienced increased economic growth post-independence.^[18]

Social legacy[edit]

Language[edit]

Scholars including Dellal (2013), Miraftab (2012) and Bamgbose (2011) have argued that Africa’s linguistic diversity has been eroded. Language has been used by western colonial powers to divide territories and create new identities which has led to conflicts and tensions between African nations.^[20]

Transition to independence[edit]

Following World War II, rapid decolonization swept across the continent of Africa as many territories gained their independence from European colonization.

In August 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss their post-war goals. In that meeting, they agreed to the Atlantic Charter, which in part stipulated that they would, "respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."^[21] This agreement became the post-WWII stepping stone toward independence as nationalism grew throughout Africa.^{[citation needed]}

Consumed with post-war debt, European powers were no longer able to afford the resources needed to maintain control of their African colonies; this allowed for African nationalists to negotiate decolonization very quickly and with minimal casualties. Some territories, however, saw great death tolls as a result of their fight for independence.^{[citation needed]}

British Empire[edit]

British Empire by 1959

Ghana[edit]

On 6 March 1957, Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) became the first sub-Saharan African country to gain its independence from European colonization. ^[22] Starting in 1945 Pan-African Congress, Gold Coast’s American-educated, independence leader Kwame Nkrumah made his focus clear. In the conference’s declaration, he wrote, “we believe in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. We affirm the right of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control, whether political or economic.”^[23]

In 1949, the conflict would ramp up when British troops opened fire on African protesters. Riots broke out across the territory and while Nkrumah and other leaders ended up in prison, the event became a catalyst for the independence movement. After being released from prison, Nkrumah founded the Convention People’s Party (CPP), which launched a mass-based campaign for independence with the slogan ‘Self Government Now!’”^[24] Heightened nationalism within the country grew their power and the political party widely expanded. In February of 1951, the Convention People's Party gained political power by winning 34 of 38 elected seats, including one for Nkrumah who was imprisoned at the time. London revised the Gold Coast Constitution to give Blacks a majority in the legislature in 1951. In 1956 they requested independence inside the Commonwealth, which was granted peacefully in 1957 with Nkrumah as prime minister and Queen Elizabeth as sovereign.^[25]

British decolonisation in Africa. By 1970 all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) were decolonized.

Winds of Change[edit]

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave the famous "Wind of Change" speech in South Africa in February 1960, where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent".^[26] Macmillan urgently wanted to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria. Under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.^[27]

Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau Uprising. In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognised independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.^[28]

French colonial empire[edit]

French soldiers with suspected Algerian rebels

The French colonial empire began to fall during the Second World War when the Vichy France regime controlled the Empire, but one after another most of the colonies were occupied by foreign powers (Japan in Indochina, Britain in Syria, Lebanon, and Madagascar, the United States and Britain in Morocco and Algeria, and Germany and Italy in Tunisia). However, control was gradually reestablished by Charles de Gaulle, who uses colonial base as a launching point to expel Vichy from Metropolitan France. De Gaulle together with most Frenchmen (except the Communists) was committed to preserving the Empire in the new form; the French Union, included in the Constitution of 1946, nominally replaced the former colonial empire, but officials in Paris remained in full control. The colonies were given local assemblies with only limited local power and budgets. There emerged a group of elites, known as evolués, who were natives of the overseas territories but lived in metropolitan France.^[29][30][31]

De Gaulle assembled a major conference of Free France colonies in Brazzaville, in Africa, in January-February, 1944; the survival of France depended on support from these colonies, and De Gaulle made numerous concessions. They included the end of forced labor, the end of special legal restrictions that apply to natives but not to whites, the establishment of elected territorial assemblies, representation in Paris in a new "French Federation", and the eventual of black Africans in the French Assembly. however, Independence was explicitly rejected as a future possibility:

The ends of the civilizing work accomplished by France in the colonies excludes any idea of autonomy, all possibility of evolution outside the French bloc of the Empire; the eventual Constitution, even in the future of self-government in the colonies is denied.^[32]

Conflict[edit]

France was immediately confronted with the beginnings of the decolonisation movement. In Algeria demonstrations in May 1945 were repressed with an estimated 6,000 Algerians killed.^[33] Unrest in Haiphong, Indochina, in November 1945 was met by another warship bombarding the city.^[34] Paul Ramadier's (SFIO) cabinet repressed the Malagasy Uprising in Madagascar in 1947. French officials estimated the number of Malagasy killed from a low of 11,000 to a French Army estimate of 89,000.^[35]

In France's African colonies, Cameroun, the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon's insurrection, started in 1955 and headed by Ruben Um Nyobé, was violently repressed over a two-year period, with perhaps as many as 100 people killed.

Algeria[edit]

French involvement in Algeria stretched back a century. Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj's movements had marked the period between the two wars, but both sides radicalised after the Second World War. In 1945, the Sétif massacre was carried out by the French army; the Algerian War started in 1954. Atrocities characterized both sides, and the number killed became highly controversial estimates that were made for propaganda purposes.^[36] Algeria was a three-way conflict due to the large number of "pieds-noirs" (Europeans who had settled there in the 125 years of French rule); the political crisis in France caused the collapse of the Fourth Republic, as Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958 and finally pulled the French soldiers and settlers out of Algeria by 1962.^[37][38] Lasting more than eight years, the estimated death toll typically falls between 300,000 and 400,000 people.^[39] By 1958, the FLN was able to negotiate peace accord with French President Charles de Gaulle and nearly 90% of all Europeans had left the territory.

French Community[edit]

The special territories of the European Union c. 2011

The French Union was replaced in the new 1958 Constitution of 1958 by the French Community. Only Guinea refused by referendum to take part in the new colonial organisation. However, the French Community dissolved itself in the midst of the Algerian War; almost all of the other African colonies were granted independence in 1960, following local referendums; some few colonies chose instead to remain part of France, under the status of overseas départements (territories). Critics of neocolonialism claimed that the Françafrique had replaced formal direct rule, they argued that while de Gaulle was granting independence on one hand, he was creating new ties with the help of Jacques Foccart, his counsellor for African matters. Foccart supported in particular the Nigerian Civil War during the late 1960s.^[40]

Robert Aldrich argues that with Algerian independence in 1962, it appeared that the Empire practically had come to an end, as the remaining colonies were quite small and lacked active nationalist movements. However, there was trouble in French Somaliland (Djibouti), which became independent in 1977. There also were complications and delays in the New Hebrides Vanuatu, which was the last to gain independence in 1980. New Caledonia remains a special case under French suzerainty;^[41] the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte voted in referendum in 1974 to retain its link with France and forgo independence.^[42]

Timeline[edit]

This table is the arranged by the earliest date of independence in this graph; 58 countries have seceded.

Rank	Country[a]	Colonial name	Colonial power[b]	Independence date[c]	First head of state[d]	Independence won through
1	Liberia	Liberia	United States	26 July 1847[e]	Joseph Jenkins Roberts[f]	Liberian Declaration of Independence
2	South Africa[g]	Cape Colony Colony of Natal Orange River Colony Transvaal Colony	United Kingdom	31 May 1910[h]	Louis Botha	South Africa Act 1909
3	Egypt[i]	Sultanate of Egypt		28 February 1922[j]	Fuad I[k]	Egyptian revolution of 1919
4	Eritrea	Italian Eritrea	Italy[l]	10 February 1947[m]	Haile Selassie[n]	-
5	Libya[o]	Italian Libya[p]	Italy	24 December 1951	Idris	-
6	Sudan	Anglo-Egyptian Sudan	United Kingdom[q] Republic of Egypt	1 January 1956[r]	Ismail al-Azhari[s]	-[t]
7	South Sudan
8	Tunisia[u]	French Protectorate of Tunisia	France	20 March 1956	Muhammad VIII al-Amin Habib Bourguiba	-[v]
9	Morocco	French Protectorate in Morocco Tangier International Zone Spanish Protectorate in Morocco Spanish West Africa Ifni	France  Spain	2 March 1956[w] 7 April 1956 10 April 1958 4 January 1969	Mohammed V	Ifni War
10	Ghana[x]	Gold Coast	United Kingdom	6 March 1957[y]	Kwame Nkrumah[z]	Gold Coast legislative election, 1956
11	Guinea	French West Africa	France	2 October 1958	Ahmed Sékou Touré	Guinean constitutional referendum, 1958
12	Cameroon	French Cameroons	France	1 January 1960[aa]	Ahmadou Ahidjo	-[ab]
13	Togo	French Togoland	France	27 April 1960	Sylvanus Olympio	-
14	Mali	French West Africa		20 June 1960[ac]	Modibo Keïta	-
15	Senegal				Léopold Sédar Senghor	-
16	Madagascar[ad]	French Madagascar		26 June 1960	Philibert Tsiranana	-[ae]
17	Democratic Republic of the Congo[af]	Belgian Congo	Belgium	30 June 1960	Patrice Lumumba[ag]	Belgo-Congolese Round Table Conference[ah]
18	Somalia[ai]	British Somaliland Trust Territory of Somaliland	United Kingdom  Italy	26 June 1960 1 July 1960[aj]	Aden Abdullah Osman Daar	-
19	Benin[ak]	French West Africa	France	1 August 1960	Hubert Maga	-
20	Niger			3 August 1960	Hamani Diori	-
21	Burkina Faso[al]			5 August 1960	Maurice Yaméogo	-
22	Ivory Coast			7 August 1960	Félix Houphouët-Boigny	-
23	Chad	French Equatorial Africa		11 August 1960	François Tombalbaye	-
24	Central African Republic			13 August 1960	David Dacko	-
25	Republic of the Congo			15 August 1960	Fulbert Youlou	-
26	Gabon			17 August 1960	Léon M'ba	-
27	Nigeria	Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria British Cameroons	United Kingdom	1 October 1960 1 June 1961 1 October 1961[am]	Nnamdi Azikiwe	-
28	Mauritania	French West Africa	France	28 November 1960	Moktar Ould Daddah	-
29	Sierra Leone	Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone	United Kingdom	27 April 1961	Milton Margai	-
30	Tanganyika[an]	Tanganyika Territory		9 December 1961	Julius Nyerere	-
31	Burundi[ao]	Ruanda-Urundi	Belgium	1 July 1962	Mwambutsa IV of Burundi	-
32	Rwanda				Grégoire Kayibanda	Rwandan Revolution
33	Algeria	French Algeria	France	5 July 1962	Ahmed Ben Bella[ap]	Algerian War
34	Uganda	Protectorate of Uganda	United Kingdom	9 October 1962	Milton Obote	-
35	Kenya	Colony and Protectorate of Kenya		12 December 1963[aq]	Jomo Kenyatta[z]	-[ar]
36	Sultanate of Zanzibar[an]	Sultanate of Zanzibar		10 December 1963	Jamshid bin Abdullah	-[as]
37	Malawi	Nyasaland		6 July 1964[at]	Hastings Banda[z]	-
38	Zambia	Northern Rhodesia		24 October 1964	Kenneth Kaunda	-
39	The Gambia	Gambia Colony and Protectorate		18 February 1965[au]	Dawda Jawara[z]	-
40	Rhodesia  Zimbabwe	Southern Rhodesia		11 November 1965 17 April 1980[av]	Ian Smith Robert Mugabe	Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence Lancaster House Agreement
41	Botswana	Bechuanaland Protectorate		30 September 1966[aw]	Seretse Khama	-
42	Lesotho	Territory of Basutoland		4 October 1966	Leabua Jonathan[ax]	-
43	Mauritius	Mauritius		12 March 1968	Seewoosagur Ramgoolam	-
44	Swaziland	Swaziland		6 September 1968	Sobhuza II	-
45	Equatorial Guinea	Spanish Territories of the Gulf of Guinea	Spain	12 October 1968	Francisco Macías Nguema	-
46	Guinea-Bissau	Overseas Province of Guinea	Portugal	10 September 1974[ay]	Luís Cabral	Guinea-Bissau War of Independence
47	Mozambique[az]	State of Mozambique		25 June 1975	Samora Machel	Mozambican War of Independence
48	Cape Verde	Overseas Province of Cape Verde		5 July 1975	Aristides Pereira[ba]	Guinea-Bissau War of Independence[bb]
49	Comoros	French Comoros	France	6 July 1975	Ahmed Abdallah	Comorian independence referendum, 1974
50	São Tomé and Príncipe	Overseas Province of São Tomé and Príncipe	Portugal	12 July 1975	Manuel Pinto da Costa	-
51	Angola[bc]	State of Angola		11 November 1975	Agostinho Neto	Angolan War of Independence
52	Seychelles	Seychelles	United Kingdom	29 June 1976	James Mancha	-
53	Djibouti	French Territory of the Afars and the Issas	France	27 June 1977	Hassan Gouled Aptidon	Afars and Issas independence referendum, 1977
54	Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic[bd]	Spanish Sahara Southern Provinces	Spain  Morocco	27 February 1976 independence not yet effectuated	El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed Mohamed Abdelaziz	Western Sahara War Western Sahara conflict

Footnotes[edit]

See also[edit]

• Colonialism
• Decolonization
• Indépendance Cha Cha, a 1960 Congolese song widely considered as the anthem of African independence
• Economic history of Africa
• Scramble for Africa
• Wars of national liberation
• States and Power in Africa
• Year of Africa

Notes[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Birmingham, David (1995). The Decolonization of Africa. Routledge. ISBN 1-85728-540-9.
• Brown, Judith M. and Wm. Roger Louis, eds. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (2001) pp 515-73.
• Chafer, Tony. The end of empire in French West Africa: France's successful decolonization (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002).
• Clayton, Anthony. The wars of French decolonization (Routledge, 2014).
• Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African society: The labor question in French and British Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Gordon, April A. and Donald L. Gordon, Lynne Riener. Understanding Contemporary Africa (London, 1996).
• Hargreaves, John D. Decolonization in Africa (2014).
• Hatch, John. Africa: The Rebirth of Self-Rule (1967)
• Khapoya, Vincent B. The African Experience (1994)
• Louis, William Roger. The transfer of power in Africa: decolonization, 1940-1960 (Yale UP, 1982).
• Louis, Wm Roger, and Ronald Robinson. "The imperialism of decolonization." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22.3 (1994): 462-511.
• Mazrui, Ali A. ed. "General History of Africa" vol. VIII, UNESCO, 1993
• Rothermund, Dietmar. The Routledge companion to decolonization (Routledge, 2006), comprehensive global coverage; 365pp
• Strang, David. "From dependency to sovereignty: An event history analysis of decolonization 1870-1987." American Sociological Review (1990): 846-860. online
• von Albertini, Rudolf. Decolonization: the Administration and Future of the Colonies, 1919-1960 (Doubleday, 1971) for the viewpoint from London and Paris.
• White, Nicholas. Decolonization: the British experience since 1945 (Routledge, 2014).
• Winks, Robin, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography (2001) ch 29-34, pp 450-557. How historians covered the history

External links[edit]

• Africa: 50 years of independence Radio France Internationale in English
• "Winds of Change or Hot Air? Decolonization and the Salt Water Test" Legal Frontiers International Law Blog