Three Roads to Independence: Ghana, the Congo and Algeria

1Three countries, three stories

Ghana, the Congo and Algeria all became independent within five years of each other, between 1957 and 1962. Yet their stories could hardly be more different: one negotiated, one rushed, one fought. Studying them side by side shows how much the colonial power, the settlers and the nationalists' own choices mattered.

2Case study 1: Ghana, the negotiated road

• 1947: the United Gold Coast Convention, a party of lawyers and merchants, invites Kwame Nkrumah home from London as its secretary.
• 1948: police fire on ex-servicemen marching in Accra; riots follow and the leaders are arrested.
• 1949: Nkrumah breaks away and founds the Convention People's Party (CPP), with the slogan "Self-Government Now" and a mass following of workers, farmers, market women and youth.
• 1950: "Positive Action": strikes and boycotts; Nkrumah is jailed.
• 1951: the CPP wins the election; the governor releases Nkrumah to lead the government. He becomes Prime Minister in 1952.
• 6 March 1957: the Gold Coast becomes independent as Ghana, the first British colony south of the Sahara to do so. Nkrumah declared that Ghana's independence would mean little unless the whole continent was freed.

Why it worked: few settlers, a strong mass party, a British government willing to negotiate, and a rich cocoa economy that seemed able to stand alone.

3Case study 2: the Congo, the rushed road

• 1950s: Belgium offers almost no higher education or political training; by independence the Congo had very few African university graduates.
• 1958 to 1959: parties form, among them Joseph Kasa-Vubu's ABAKO and Patrice Lumumba's Congolese National Movement (MNC). Riots in Léopoldville in January 1959 shock Belgium.
• January 1960: at a Round Table conference in Brussels Belgium agrees to independence in only five months.
• 30 June 1960: independence, with Kasa-Vubu as President and Lumumba as Prime Minister.
• July 1960 onwards: the army mutinies against its Belgian officers; Belgian troops return; the mineral-rich province of Katanga secedes under Moïse Tshombe with Belgian backing. Lumumba asks for UN help and a UN force arrives.
• September 1960 to January 1961: Kasa-Vubu dismisses Lumumba; Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu takes control; Lumumba is arrested and killed in Katanga on 17 January 1961. Belgium later acknowledged its share of responsibility.
• 1965: Mobutu seizes power and rules until 1997.

Why it went wrong: no preparation, a five-month handover, Belgian and mining interests behind secession, and Cold War rivalry that made a nationalist leader a target.

4Case study 3: Algeria, the armed road

• Background: French since 1830 and treated as part of France itself, with about a million European settlers who held the best land and most political power.
• 8 May 1945: nationalist demonstrations in Sétif on the day of victory in Europe are crushed, with thousands of Algerians killed.
• 1 November 1954: the National Liberation Front (FLN) launches an armed struggle.
• 1956 to 1958: the war escalates; the French army's use of torture is exposed and divides France. The crisis brings Charles de Gaulle back to power in 1958.
• 1959 to 1962: de Gaulle accepts Algerian self-determination; die-hard settlers resist with terrorism of their own. The Évian Accords (March 1962) end the war.
• 5 July 1962: independence, after a referendum in which Algerians voted overwhelmingly for it. Most settlers left for France.

Why it took war: France saw Algeria as French soil, and the settlers had the votes and the guns to block reform. Hundreds of thousands of Algerians died; estimates vary widely.

5Comparing the three