Post Colonial Africa Pdf

[Christian Swindler]

Thepostcolonial history of Africa spans the postcolonial, neocolonial, and contemporary period in the history of Africa. The decolonization of Africa started with Libya in 1951, although Liberia, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. Many countries followed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in 1960 with the Year of Africa, which saw 17 African nations declare independence, including a large part of French West Africa. Most of the remaining countries gained independence throughout the 1960s, although some colonizers (Portugal in particular) were reluctant to relinquish sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence which lasted for a decade or more. The last African countries to gain formal independence were Guinea-Bissau (1974), Mozambique (1975) and Angola (1975) from Portugal; Djibouti from France in 1977; Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980; and Namibia from South Africa in 1990. Eritrea later split off from Ethiopia in 1993.[1]

Moroccan nationalism developed during the 1930s; the Istiqlal Party was formed, pushing for independence. In 1953 sultan Mohammed V of Morocco called for independence. On March 2, 1956, Morocco became independent of France. Mohammed V became ruler of independent Morocco.[2]

In 1954, Algeria formed the National Liberation Front (FLN) as it split from France. This resulted in the Algerian War, which lasted until independence negotiations in 1962. Muhammad Ahmed Ben Bella was elected President of Algeria. Over a million French nationals, predominantly Pied-Noirs, left the country, crippling the economy.[3]

In 1934, the "Neo Destour" (New Constitution) party was founded by Habib Bourguiba pushing for independence in Tunisia. Tunisia became independent in 1955. Its bey was deposed and Habib Bourguiba elected as President of Tunisia.[4]

Following World War II, nationalist movements arose across West Africa, most notably in Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah.[8] In 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve its independence, followed the next year by France's colonies; by 1974, West Africa's nations were entirely autonomous. Since independence, many West African nations have been plagued by corruption and instability, with notable civil wars in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, and a succession of military coups in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Many states have failed to develop their economies despite enviable natural resources, and political instability is often accompanied by undemocratic government.[9][10]

The central regions of Africa were traditionally regarded to be the regions between Kilwa and the mouth of the Zambesi river. Due to its isolated position from the coasts, this area has received minimal attention from historians pertaining to Africa. It also had one of the most varied sources of European colonial imperialists including Germany in Cameroon, Britain in Northern Cameroons, Belgium in Congo, and France in CAF. Due to its territory, among the main trope s regarding Central Africa is traversing its lands and the nature of its tropicals.[11] Since 1982, one of the main protracted issues within central Africa has been the ongoing secession movement of the secessionist entity of Ambazonia. The impasse between Cameroon and Ambazonia gained steam in 1992 when Fon Gorji-Dinka filed an international lawsuit against Cameroon claiming that Ambazonian territories are held illegally by the latter and describing Cameroonian claims on Ambazonian territories as illegal. Fifteen years later, this stalemate would escalate when Abmazonia formally declared itself as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.[12]

The Mau Mau Uprising took place in Kenya from 1952 until 1956 but was put down by British and local forces. A state of emergency remained in place until 1960. Kenya became independent in 1963, and Jomo Kenyatta served as its first president.[13]

The early 1960s also signaled the start of major clashes between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi. In 1994 this culminated in the Rwandan genocide, a conflict in which over 800,000 people were murdered.[14]

In 1948 the apartheid laws were started in South Africa by the dominant National Party. These were largely a continuation of existing policies; the difference was the policy of "separate development" (Apartheid). Where previous policies had only been disparate efforts to economically exploit the African majority, Apartheid represented an entire philosophy of separate racial goals, leading to both the divisive laws of 'petty apartheid,' and the grander scheme of African homelands.[15]

During the onset of colonization, European powers preferentially dealt with African local leaders and chieftaincies. Colonial powers employed underhand mechanisms in territorial acquisition and boundary making such as deceit, fraud, intimidation, and bribery. Moreover, colonial powers utilized various techniques to influence African leaders and obtain resource rich land.[1] The Berlin Conference legitimized the partition of Africa; colonialists designed regional maps without providing any notification to the local African rulers, and made treaties among colonial powers to avoid resource competition. However, many errors were made due to their superficial knowledge of the continent and undeveloped maps in existence.

Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister in 1906, demonstrated this arbitrary and under-informed approach at the signing of the Anglo-French convention on the Nigeria-Niger boundary in 1906, when he said: "We [the British and the French] have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps were no white man's foot ever trod: we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediments that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were."[2] This statement helps us to understand how colonial powers designed artificial African boundaries without knowledge of the land and local communities.

European powers completed cartographic surveys of territories through boundary commissions from 1900-1930, which allowed total control of colonies. However, these focused solely on land control and disregarded the impacts of partitioning on ethnic groups. Artificial borders split many closely related ethnic groups into different colonial regions. In the Horn of Africa, for instance, they split Somalis into French Somaliland, British Somalia, Italian Somalia, Ethiopian Somalia, and the Somali region of northern Kenya. Such colonial borders have massive effects on Somali people who share a common culture, a similar way of life, and the same religion, but live as separate citizens of Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya. Similarly, the Afar people of Ethiopia were split amongst Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, and the Anyuaa and Nuer were split between Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Following artificial border designs, African communities could not move freely in their daily activities and nomadic practices, which inflicted economic hardship and social inconvenience. Changing the lifestyle and structural systems of African communities negatively affected their traditional life, administrative structures, and economic well-being. This deprived African borderland communities of economic opportunity by hindering their movements, and forcing them to live differently than their traditional life. For example, many Africans are pastoralist and nomadic people that need vast land for grazing and water. However, artificial borders limited borderland people to herding on limited land and forced them into resource competition and confrontation due to limited mobility with other borderland peoples.

Besides improperly designed borders, European colonial powers employed "divide and rule," "direct rule," and "assimilation" policies, which forced the loss of social norms, identity, and social order for Africans. Moreover, these policies instigated conflicts among local people, dividing them even further, and consequently strengthening colonial power. Doing so helped gradually develop hostile relations among borderland people, and post-independent African governments and political elites used this division for political means. Some political elites in Africa affiliate more along ethnic lines, and play crucial roles in fueling tensions and escalating political disenfranchisement. For instance, the Lou-Nuer of South Sudan and the Jikany-Nuer of Ethiopia are the same ethnic group, and live along the Ethiopia-South Sudan border, yet they are considered as two distinct ethnic groups with different nationalities and have developed hostility through resource competition. Despite the effects of colonization and artificial borders on borderland communities, African political leaders have not alleviated these problems but rather used them as political instruments.

Improper border design and the partitioning of ethnic groups have contributed to underdevelopment, and instability in African states. In addition, the disconnect between center-periphery relation demonstrated by the exclusion by some. African states of borderland communities in economic development exacerbate the challenges. The lack of economic, social, and political development and limited upward mobility expose the borderland communities to a number of human security problems, including widespread poverty, lack of infrastructure, limited education, and cross-border intergroup conflicts. The improper design of African borders and use of these designs as political instruments have increased instability and underdevelopment for borderland communities across the continent.

The process of gaining independence in Africa was accompanied by the intensified colonial liberation movements, elite struggle for power, and the formation of new state borders. Having received formal sovereignty, African countries faced the challenge of building their own identity. However, most metropoles continued to actively intervene in the affairs of the former colonies under the pretext of assisting them in state-building, forming of the economic and military systems. Therefore, metropoles managed to subsequently control development process. A new type of colonialism was launched, characterized by a low level of predictability and foresight. This trends mainly fit with neo-patrimonialism, which focuses on the legitimacy search and artificial statehood creation. The emergence of a new African political elite in the postcolonial period, formed at the expense of the army and senior military officials, was accompanied by the search for an effective development path and attempts to assure a fragile balance between tradition and modernization. This served to aggravate economic, and then political dependence of African states on global economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. One of the key challenges of the postcolonial period in Africa is the blurring of borders and, as a consequence, the rise of ethno-religious problems. Attempts to resolve this kind of threats lead to the intervention of both intra-regional non-state actors and external powers.

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