Decolonisation in Africa with Case Studies of Ghana and Kenya
Senior 3 · History and Citizenship
Decolonisation in Africa with Case Studies of Ghana and Kenya
Lesson 2 of 4
20 min
On 25 May 1963 the leaders of thirty-two independent African states met in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and founded the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Twenty years earlier only four African countries had been independent. Today 25 May is celebrated as Africa Day. Study the timeline below: it shows how fast the map of Africa changed.
Figure 1. Most of Africa became independent in less than ten years, between 1956 and 1964; the Portuguese colonies and the settler states of southern Africa came later. The spacing is by event, not to scale.
Reading the timeline. Independence came first in North Africa and in British and French West Africa, where there were few settlers. The year 1960 stands out. Settler colonies (Kenya, Algeria, Southern Rhodesia) and Portugal's colonies came later and through war. This lesson asks what independence changed, and what it did not.
Definition
Nation-building: creating a sense of shared national identity among all the peoples of a new state.
Africanisation: replacing European officials, managers and teachers with Africans after independence.
Neo-colonialism: a situation in which a country is independent in law but its economy and politics are still controlled from outside. The word was made famous by Kwame Nkrumah's book Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965).
Coup d'état (or coup): the sudden, illegal seizure of power, usually by the army.
Non-alignment: refusing to join either side in the Cold War.
| Area | Gains | Problems |
|---|---|---|
| Political | Africans governed their own states; Africa gained a voice in the United Nations; the OAU (1963) worked for unity and supported liberation movements in southern Africa | Colonial borders were kept (Unit 6); many states became one-party states; army coups began, as in Ghana in February 1966; civil wars, as in Congo (from 1960) and Nigeria (1967 to 1970) |
| Economic | Africanisation of jobs; new development plans, roads, dams and industries; control over some natural resources | Economies still depended on one or two exports and on former colonial powers; falling export prices and, later, debt; "neo-colonialism" |
| Social and cultural | Rapid growth of schools and universities; pride in African history, languages, music and names | Few trained people at independence in some countries; tensions between regions and groups that politicians exploited; refugees |
| International | Non-alignment; new friendships across Africa and Asia | The Cold War powers competed for influence and sometimes backed dictators or rebels |
Table 1. Gains and problems of decolonisation. Sources: the Wikipedia articles in the credits.
Rwanda and Burundi became independent on 1 July 1962, Uganda on 9 October 1962, Tanganyika in December 1961 and Kenya in December 1963. In Rwanda, independence followed the violence of 1959 to 1961 and the abolition of the monarchy, and many Tutsi had already been driven into exile in neighbouring countries. The First Republic kept the colonial categories on identity cards and used them to discriminate (Senior 2). Independence ended Belgian rule, but not the divisions colonial rule had fixed: a reminder that decolonisation was a beginning, not an end.
Worked example: weighing effects
Question: "Independence brought political freedom but not economic freedom." Explain this statement, using examples. (6 marks)
Political freedom. After independence Africans chose their own governments, joined the United Nations and founded the OAU in 1963.
Economic limits. Most economies still depended on exporting one or two raw materials, such as cocoa from Ghana or copper from Zambia, at prices set on world markets, and on investment and aid from the former colonial powers.
Conclusion. Nkrumah called this "neo-colonialism". The statement is broadly true, although states that built schools, industries and regional trade gradually gained more economic control.
Tip
Gains and problems, area by area. Use the four areas of Table 1 (political, economic, social, international) and give one gain and one problem for each, with a named example.
Warning
Don't blame every post-independence problem on colonialism, or on African leaders alone. Colonial borders, economies and divisions mattered, but so did the choices of new governments and the Cold War powers. Good answers show how they interacted.
Africa Day, 25 May, celebrates the founding of the OAU, which became the African Union in 2002. What does African unity mean to you today? Name one way in which African countries cooperate now, for example in trade, travel or peacekeeping.
Practice
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
