1. What were the ideas that influenced the independent states?
Some African countries became independent from their colonial rulers after negotiations with them, while in other countries there were long wars of liberation.
As with all historical processes, decolonisation did not take place as a result of only one thing.
There were three main reasons why most African colonies obtained uhuru in the 1950s and 1960s.
The shifting balance of power in the world
After the Second World War Britain and France were economically exhausted, and they could no longer maintain their empires. The balance of power in the world shifted from Europe.
Also, the colonial powers realised that they could grant political independence to their colonies, while still maintaining economic influence.
The newly formed United Nations Organization, established after World War II, was committed to rights for everyone. This put pressure on the colonial powers to give independence to their colonies.
These comments summarise the feelings of African nationalist leaders towards colonial rule:
‘We can rule ourselves. We did this before they [the Europeans] came. Why should we not do it now? We did not ask them to come here. They invited themselves. This has always been a civilised country with civilised values. The Europeans have shown us how to make technical progress, and we are grateful, but at the same time they have not done this for nothing. They have had their pound of flesh. They have grown fat on the riches of Africa…All Ghanaians will be free’. - Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of independent Ghana, 1956
‘Colonialism has meant selling our ore and being left with the holes.’ - Samora Machel, first President of independent Mocambique, 1976
‘Colonisation had one significant result. A sentiment was created on the African continent - a sentiment of oneness’.- Julius Nyrerere, first President of independent Tanzania
‘The African hates European domination but does not hate the white man. He welcomes him. The physical presence of the white man in Africa is welcome, but his domination is unwelcome’. - Ndabaningi Sithole, Zimbabwean leader
‘In all the three hundred years the British were here they didn't build anything for us. They only taught us how to sing 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and 'God Save the Queen.’ - Yahya Jammeh, President of the Gambia
African nationalism
After the Second World War there was a movement across Africa to fight colonialism and demand independence from the colonisers. This movement was called African nationalism. Africans in the colonies who had European forms of education usually led the struggles for independence.
The struggle for independence in Africa was an assertion of the humanness of the African people. One African leader, a Kenyan politician, Tom Mboya, said the struggle for independence was the 'rediscovery of Africa by Africans'. Amilcar Cabral, a Marxist intellectual from Cape Verde, described uhuru as the 're-Africanisation of minds' or 'rebecoming Africans'.
Pan Africanists argued that Africans had a common heritage, and gave black people all over the world a new self-confidence.
The Cold War
Towards the end of the Second World War, there was international pressure on European colonial powers to grant independence to their African colonies. America and Russia became the world’s Superpowers and they put pressure on the colonisers to grant independence to their colonies.
The period of the Cold War began in 1945, and America and Russia were anxious to assert their ideologies (capitalism vs communism) and exploit Africa’s vast resources.