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African History

Colonialism Effects: The Damaging Impact Of Colonialism on African Societies

By Historian June 18, 2024

Colonialism Effects On Africa

Colonialism Effects: For example, the Portuguese enclaves in the sixteenth century and the Dutch East India Company’s South African colony in the seventeenth century were the first European colonies in Africa. However, the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 was the start of colonization of the whole continent, which ended with Namibia’s independence in 1990.

During these 160 years, European countries made big changes to the economies, societies, religions, and politics of Africa, whether they were aware of it or not. In line with ideas about the role of government from the 1800s, European forces in Africa set up governments whose main goal was to keep things running smoothly, not to improve the economy or society.

But some people also thought that the colonies should pay for themselves. The European powers wanted the colonies, but they didn’t want them to cost too much. Because of this, in the early years of colonialism, European countries either kept their colonial staffs pretty small or hired chartered companies (like the British Royal Niger Company in northern Nigeria) to run the colonies.

In either case, European governments had to form partnerships with powerful groups in the colonies to make sure they ran things well. Examples include the Barotse in Northern Rhodesia, the Baganda in Uganda, the Fulbe in northern Nigeria, and the coastal Swahili peoples in German East Africa. These kinds of partnerships often caused or worsened ethnic and tribal tensions, favoring certain groups over others. For example, Belgium sided with the Tutsi against the Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi.

Many of them also created a privileged class from which colonial governments hired their native officials, police, interpreters, and clerks. Colonial rule benefited a very small group of people, but it hurt the vast majority. Individuals or groups who refused to cooperate with the colonial government, or who had previously been adversaries of the now-privileged groups, rapidly lost their influence within the colonies.

There are many examples of groups that fought against colonial power instead of working with it. In Southern Rhodesia in the late 1800s, the Ndebele and Mashona rebelled against the white colonizers several times. These groups lost their lands and were forced onto reservations, where they often lost their animals and had to start over in new communities that had been broken up by war and forced migration.

The Bunyoro, who were traditionally enemies of the Baganda, fought back against British favoritism toward them. As part of British rule, the Bunyoro had to give Baganda land, get rid of the Bunyoro ruler, and make the Bunyoro choose Baganda officials. The colonial government killed two-thirds of the Herero people during the Herero uprising in German Southwest Africa (Namibia), took their land, and prohibited those who survived from owning animals.

Many Europeans lived in colonies at various points in time. For example, the Germans lived in eastern and southwest Africa, Cameroun, and Togo; the French lived in Algeria; the Portuguese lived in Angola and Mozambique; and the British South Africa Company encouraged people to live in Southern and Northern Rhodesia and, of course, South Africa.

Most of the time, governments (or companies) urged people to move to Europe by offering economic incentives. These could include free land, agricultural supplies, assistance with moving and transportation costs, and better trade terms with the home country.

In some places, like the Portuguese colonies, settlers ran their businesses like feudal lords. They could tax, judge, hire workers, and make their own private police units on their own estates. Sometimes, like in Algeria, settlers formed a strong pressure group in their home country and had a big impact on colonial policy. The continent’s economy also changed a lot because of occupation.

Most parts of Africa did not have a system of paid work before the colonial period. This made things challenging for foreign governments because they had to figure out how to get people to do government work like building roads, canals, and bridges. In many cases, the only way out was to make Africans work for the colonial governments. These governments partnered with local chieftains, who provided slaves and paid labor.

It is easy to see how colonialism can go wrong by looking at the Congo Free State, which was ruled by Belgian King Leopold and then by Belgium as the Belgian Congo in 1908. The government used body mutilation and lashings as punishments for a wide range of crimes while taking advantage of the area’s wild rubber, ivory, and palm oil resources. They also often took hostages to make sure villages met their rubber targets.

Even though these things happened, colonial governments often improved infrastructure. By the time World War I, the roads in central Africa had made most of the continent’s interior accessible for travel. In general, colonial governments didn’t care much about growth. However, building roads, railways, canals, and other similar structures was important because they made it possible to move troops, supplies, and trade goods across the continent.

A lot of historians say that building this kind of infrastructure and less fighting between African groups led to a time of “colonial peace,” which meant that more attention was paid to development and social, cultural, and religious problems. Others, on the other hand, say that colonial peace was really a form of cultural warfare because it shook up African societies and the rules and authority that were already in place. Upon the arrival of colonial governments in West Africa, the economy relied heavily on the cultivation of cash crops for trade with Europe. However, most farmers continued to cultivate for survival.

To get more money, colonial leaders could just tax trade and farming that were already going on and push for more improvements in rural production, like the French did in Senegal. Indigenous people in central and eastern Africa also had to pay taxes to colonial governments. Europeans forced Africans to work for them, usually as foreign workers on farms, to earn the money they needed to pay their taxes.

This kind of economic reform, along with the use of coins and bills, helped trade grow and turned some parts of Africa into cash-based markets. But it did so at a terrible cost to the people. Africans were forced to work for money to pay for colonial expenses, and most of them worked in nonagricultural fields. This messed up rural life, made poverty worse, and caused people to move from the countryside to the cities, which in turn caused the postcolonial famines of the 1970s.

During the colonial era, African societies and cultures also went through big changes and shifts. The establishment of colonies on the continent led to the creation of borders that didn’t always align with the government’s or indigenous situations. This is how colonial borders brought together people who were enemies and split up groups of people who used to be friends. The division of the Somali people by British, Italian, French, and Ethiopian officials serves as the worst example of this.

Even though it started in Europe, World War I had a huge impact on Africa. The European colonies in Africa provided the European armies with men to fight, resources, and money to pay for the war and feed their troops. Women and men from Africa began the war as part of colonial armies that were already in place. These included the British West African Frontier Force, the Belgian Force Publique, the French Tirailleurs, and the German Schütztruppen.

When the war started, these groups got bigger, and African men joined them either to follow their traditional leaders or to try to make money. But as the war went on and more people died, foreign powers started to demand that most of their people serve in the military. Over 500,000 Africans served in the French army during the war, and about 200,000 of them died.

The British forced more than a million men to fight and help out. Large groups of Africans were also in the German, Belgian, and Portuguese armies. While no one agrees on the exact number of Africans who died in the war, a low estimate puts the number at 300,000. Many Africans lost their lives, and their societies descended into turmoil as individuals fled and concealed themselves to evade conscription or staged violent demonstrations.

European rule began to take over; crimes were tried in colonial courts, and local chieftains were forced or tempted to work as subordinates for European officials. This made traditional leaders look less trustworthy. Most traditional leaders based their power on religious approval. As these leaders lost credibility and became less important, religious issues began to arise.

Since colonial governments mostly dealt with politics and the economy, European missionary groups mostly handled schooling and social work. In most parts of Africa, missionary work began before colonies were officially set up. Colonialism gave these missions new life because more and more European men and women liked the thought of converting the native people who lived in the colonies.

The majority of the time, mission work involved establishing schools in villages. These schools taught kids basic reading, writing, and math skills, as well as religion. Almost everywhere in Africa, where Islam was not the predominant faith, many people converted to various forms of Christianity.

As a result, a new group of mission-educated Africans emerged. These individuals frequently became the driving force behind increased education and mission work, serving as a rival power center that posed a threat to the established elites. People who went to mission schools had an easier time dealing with colonial officials. As a result, many of them got jobs in the colonial administration. Initially, missionary education may have been beneficial for the colonial forces. However, over time, it turned against European rule.

Mission-trained leaders began to strive to incorporate more African elements into the religious and political institutions established by the West. This group produced many of the first African nationalists. These African Christians began to attack both the colonial government and the colonies’ churches. They pointed out the differences between what they learned about Christianity in mission schools and how the colonial government actually worked.

This led to the construction of distinct African Christian churches in the early 1900s. However, not all stories about mission work in Africa are good. Mission work brought Africa to the attention of Europeans and painted its native people as weak, split, and uncivilized. This, according to many historians, set the stage for colonialism. In this way, colonialism had both positive and negative effects on African societies, but overall, it was not in Africa’s favor.

The establishment of colonial systems aided Europe. The economies were changed to benefit the government, the home country, and the European traders, merchants, and manufacturers in the colonies. The design of African political systems aimed to maintain submissiveness and obedience rather than provide genuine benefits to the people. Despite the construction of railroads, their primary purpose was to facilitate trade with Europe.

Despite the spread of education, it was mission schools that dismantled African communities and their traditional social structures. European rule increased the extraction of resources, yet the resulting wealth did not contribute to the development of these countries.

Even though Europe brought new tools to Africa, it didn’t teach the people there how to use them. There are many political, economic, social, and cultural issues in some current African states that have their roots in the time when they were colonies.

Also Read: Burkina Faso History: The Incredible History Of Africa’s Colonial Period

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African History

Chad Independence: The Incredible History from Freedom to the Present

By Historian June 15, 2024

History Of Chad Independence

Chad Independence: Constant civil unrest and repeated interference from outside the country have marked most of Chad’s postcolonial history. Numerous racial, religious, economic, and political factors contribute to the strife. A basic level of hostility existed between the Christian Sara people in the south of Chad and the Muslim Goranes people in the north, especially the Toubou. Careless French colonial management exacerbated and strengthened this hostility. Chad became its own nation on August 11, 1960.

The first president, François Tombalbaye (later changing his name to Ngarta), did everything he could to strengthen his power. In 1963, the country recognized his Parti Progressiste Tchadien (PPT) as its sole official party. Tombalbaye’s main motivation was to keep his power. Tombalbaye could arrest and imprison politicians, government workers, and finally the military from both the north and the south.

But after 1963, many people in the north thought they were the target of a planned plan by an elite in the south to control them. Excessive taxes, coupled with unfavorable economic and cultural policies, consistently inflamed public discontent. In April 1975, there was a coup d’état that killed Tombalbaye. General Félix Malloum, who was in jail for political reasons, replaced him.

The Front de Liberation Nationale de Tchad (FROLINAT) initiated an uprising as early as 1966. It was already clear that outsiders were involved in the war in Chad. Libya or Nigeria provided assistance to different parts of FROLINAT, founded in Sudan. From 1969 to 1972, Tombalbaye agreed to French military action to stop the revolt, which was getting stronger. But Tombalbaye’s removal made it more likely for the revolt to break up into smaller groups.

Since the FROLINAT didn’t have a shared philosophy, it relied on its fight against the oppressive regime to keep itself together. The movement had many different ideas. Furthermore, the politics of the conflict transcended simple binary oppositions such as north versus south or Christian versus Muslim. Approximately a hundred distinct language groups exist, frequently dividing into smaller subgroups. There are only five million people on earth.

Also, relationships within the same group were very likely to split up, especially in the hostile north. The civil war’s divisions made this tendency to find friends among nearby subgroups stand out even more than among ethnic, religious, or linguistic groups that include everyone. In this way, the conflict in Chad aligns with the “warlord” model, which emphasizes regional power centers based on personal rule and military force, and the resulting politics of conflict and war.

Malloum’s new government pushed a strategy of national reconciliation. At the same time, Moammar Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, kept invading from the disputed Aouzou Strip in the far north. He also got involved in the politics of different groups within the FROLINAT, which caused a major split within the group and raised concerns in the West. Hissène Habré-led anti-Libyan organizations joined a transient coalition government with Malloum’s military council that was based on a “fundamental charter.” They kept the name Forces Armées du Nord (FAN).

Reuniting as the Forces Armées Populaires (FAP), the remaining majority of the FAN, under the leadership of Goukouni Oueddei, maintained a robust military and territorial position. Goukouni’s troops began to advance toward the city around the middle of 1978, but French reinforcements were required to halt their progress. As the Habré-Malloum alliance began to disintegrate, it initiated a cyclical process of dissolution. The outcome was the formation of numerous distinct groups.

The Forces Armées Tchadiennes, composed of the remnants of the national army under Colonel Wadal Kamagoué in the south, and Ahmet Acyl’s New Vulcan Army in the north and center of the country, held significant importance alongside the FAN and FAP. After Malloum quit in April 1979, there were a number of talks to try to make peace. They formed a broad-based government, the Gouvernement d’union nationale de transition (GUNT), with Goukouni as president, Habré as defense minister, and Kamougué as vice president.

These were meant to show who really held positions in a government that only existed in name. The civil war started up again. The Organization of African Unity’s inter-African peacekeeping force encountered unsolvable issues with its mission and resources. What other countries did was more important. French diplomatic moves and American secret aid helped Habré’s FAN, while Gaddafi chose a short-term tactical retreat.

Idriss Deby, the FAN’s operational leader, was living in Biltine at the time of the offensive. On June 7, 1982, Habré entered the capital. Factionalism lived on. There were many separate private armies, or “codos,” in the south. With Libyan assistance, Goukouni was able to rebuild the GUNT in the north. In 1983, French paratroopers were the only ones who stopped the GUNT from taking N’Djaména.

Habré knew that he needed to rule more than just the capital and his own main supporters if he wanted to stay in power. He was mostly effective because he used strict rules and practical policies. In addition to having a stronger military and stricter rules, Habré relied heavily on the support of the United States and France, particularly the latter. During the 1980s, French President François Mitterrand’s support depended on Chad keeping a strong wall against the Libyan invasion while also following French orders. Libya suffered costly war losses to Chad in 1986 and 1987.

So, Gaddafi agreed to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague handle the conflict over the Aouzou Strip. The ICJ ruled in favor of Chad in 1994. At the Franco-African Summit in 1990, President Mitterrand tried to change French policy in a way that would help Africa become more democratic by supporting liberal democracy and diversity. Even though people in Paris were against the new line, Habré had already started to change the constitution ahead of time.

On December 10, 1989, a vote approved a new constitution and selected Habré to serve as president for seven years. As stated, 99.94% of voters agreed with this. The state could not enforce the freedoms and rights written into the constitution.

Habré and his ministers would not face accountability, regardless of how trustworthy the planned National Assembly without parties was. Throughout 1989, racial tensions among government troops in the south caused fear and discontent in N’Djaména. The Anakaza, a group of leaders in Habré’s subclan, tried to stop other groups in the alliance from making money off of the sale of Libyan weapons taken during the war in 1986–1987.

War heroes Deby and Hassan Djamous, as well as the powerful interior minister, Mahamat Itno, stood up for isolated groups, particularly the Bideyat and Zaghawa. Only Deby lived through a failed coup and was able to run away to Darfur in western Sudan to get his life back on track. Libya helped build the Mouvement Patriotique du Salut (MPS), primarily from exiled Hadjerai and Zaghawa people, with some Zaghawa people also coming from Sudan.

Following Habré’s strong response to Mitterrand’s plan at La Baule, France changed its mind and stopped supporting him. On December 2, 1990, Deby became the MPS leader in N’Djaména. When Deby took office, he promised a quick shift to democracy. However, the process took a long time and was difficult to do.

Early 1993 saw the holding of a sovereign national conference to draft a constitution. The meeting’s suggestions would remain untested for another three years. Over two-thirds of voters chose the new constitution, which was based on the Fifth Republic in France and had a strong president. It was clear that votes for the president and lawmakers could happen. The election for president took place over two rounds in June and July 1996. Deby beat Kamougué.

In the January and February 1997 legislative elections, Deby’s MPS beat nine other parties to get the most seats in the new National Assembly. Many observers inside and outside the country agreed that all three elections were what most voters wanted. Of course, it became clear that there was cheating in each poll.

Fraud was slight in the referendum, but more obvious in legislative races and the presidential election. During the Debye era, violence between people decreased. Peace agreements have led a number of political and military groups to give up their revolt and join the government and national army.

Still, violence continues. In January 1999, the rebels launched an attack in the country’s north and east. Human rights groups have also said that the government uses harsh methods to silence its opponents, such as torturing and killing them without a trial.

The oil fields in the southern subprefecture of Doba could bring Chad a lot of money, which is the most important thing that will determine its near future. Although this controversial project has the potential to change the economy of Chad, it could also hurt the environment and lead to a new civil war.

Also Read: Cameroon History: The Incredible Journey To Independence And Unification, 1960–1961.

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Biography

Joseph Ephraim Biography: The Incredible Life And History Of J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930)

By Historian June 13, 2024

Joseph Ephraim Biography

He was born in Cape Coast on September 29, 1866. His name was Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford. His father, Reverend Joseph de Graft Hayford, was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher. He sent him to Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone after the Wesleyan Boys’ High School in Cape Coast.

Joseph Ephraim taught at Accra Wesleyan High School and then became its director when he got back to the Gold Coast. He lost this job because he was working as a subeditor for his uncle James Hutton Brew’s weekly newspaper, the Gold Coast Echo. After that paper went out of business, he became the editor of two other local newspapers that didn’t last long.

He also worked as an articled clerk for a European lawyer in Cape Coast. Eventually, he moved to England and graduated from St. Peter’s College, Cambridge. After that, he went to London’s Inner Temple to study law. In 1896, he passed the bar exam and returned to the Gold Coast to work as a lawyer. When he returned, the Gold Coast Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (GCARPS) was against the Lands Bill of 1894.

Casely Hayford assisted in organizing society’s opposition to this law, which aimed to regulate land management on the Gold Coast. He gathered a wealth of information about native institutions and wrote his first book, Gold Coast Native Institutions (1903), about them. He thought Africans should keep their own customs alive.

Published in 1911, it combined elements of a novel and “intellectual autobiography” [July 1967, p. 433]. In it, the main character, Kwamankra, who was a lot like Casely Hayford, tells his people to “free themselves from the slavery of foreign ideas harmful to racial development.”
When the young man was a student in Sierra Leone, Wilmot Edward Blyden’s “Ethiopianism” deeply moved him, and it had a significant influence on a lot of the things he wrote after that. The book Ethiopia Unbound talks about the mistakes made by colonial governments and the hypocrisy of materialistic Europe in comparison to the “simple idealism of unspoiled, persecuted Africa.”

The “gin trade” made native kings less powerful. Christian organizations, despite preaching brotherhood, segregated people of different races within their congregations and denied Africans a voice in government.

Casely Hayford wrote The Truth about the West African Land Question (1913) in response to protests against the Forestry Bill of 1911. He tried to connect this new attempt to “manage reserved lands” with the failed Lands Bill of 1894. The fact that he went to London by himself in 1911 and with four other people in 1912 to fight against this law shows how important he was to the colony.

The British government set up a committee to look at land policies in West Africa, but these delegations didn’t have much of an impact on it. Eventually, the bill died because of all the discussion in the committee. It was becoming more common for colonists to want chiefs to be involved in running the government. Invading the land they owned seemed like it would be bad for this strategy.

The way the British government dealt with land issues in the region made Casely Hayford think of a more West African group than the GCARPS, which people his age thought had become too narrow-minded. To have more freedom in how he wrote, he started his own newspaper, the Cape Coast Weekly Gold Coast Leader, in 1902.

He used the paper to propose a meeting of the most important men from the four British countries in West Africa. However, World War I came along and stopped them. Joseph Ephraim and other Gold Coast professionals weren’t able to set up the Gold Coast Section of the Projected West African Conference until 1919. During the war and at the peace conference in Versailles, the idea of self-determination became popular.

Joseph Ephraim also thought it was time for the “educated natives” to take over as the “natural leaders” of their country. This made the leaders of the GCARPS and Nana Ofori Atta of Akyem Abuakwa, the colony’s most important chief, angry. In 1920, Accra hosted the first meeting of the future Congress of British West Africa. The group chose Casely Hayford as its second vice president.

We should build a British West African university and increase opportunities for Africans to work at the highest levels of the civil service. Congress passed 83 resolutions, including these. At first, Governor Guggisberg’s government showed some support, but when the Congress quickly sent a group to London to push for changes, this support went away.

The chiefs, under the leadership of Nana Ofori Atta, fought against the notion that the educated elite should be in charge by default. They also made it harder for Joseph Ephraim and the other people on his delegation to have an impact on the Colonial Office in London. Because of the fight between the chiefs and the educated elite, the Gold Coast government was able to get rid of Congress for not being fair.

In order to change this idea, Congress took over the GCARPS and made Joseph Ephraim vice president. He spoke out against Nana Ofori Atta and his friends in the Legislative Council, where he had been an informal member since 1916. He called them “traitors to the cause of British West Africa.”

It was too late, though. There were a few joint meetings in Freetown in 1923, Bathhurst in 1925 and 1926, and Lagos in 1929, but it wasn’t until these times that the movement really came to life. Also, Governor Guggisberg’s new law from 1925 quickly changed the political scene. It made things worse between the chiefs and the educated class by giving the chiefs more seats in the expanded Legislative Council. Casely Hayford spoke out strongly against this law.

In 1926, he went to London as a one-man delegation. But because he was a practical politician, he knew that more resistance was pointless, so he ran for office and won, becoming the municipal representative for Sekondi. This move caused division among the educated elite.
Lawyer Kobina Sekyi led an organization with mostly Cape Coast members, which took over the GCARPS and labeled Casely Hayford and the educated elite who accompanied him as “defective leaders.” In 1929, as a member of the Legislative Council, Casely Hayford reconciled with Nana Sir Ofori Atta, who had received a knighthood in 1927. Casely Hayford received the MBE in 1919. He died in Accra on August 11, 1930, not long after this reunion.

Cameroon History: The Incredible Journey To Independence And Unification, 1960–1961.

By Historian June 11, 2024

Cameroon History To Independence

Cameroon History: Rebellion, freedom, and reunification all happened at the same time and led to the creation of modern Cameroon, which speaks two languages. In 1955, someone rose up in French Cameroon. The Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) led the uprising, which turned into a bloody guerrilla war that lasted right into the postcolonial era.

France chose not to use the trusteeship system in Cameroon because they wanted to treat the country like any other foreign colony. The UN Charter laid out the political goals of the trusteeship system in Article 76(b). These goals were to help trusting areas like Cameroon and Togo move toward self-government and independence.

France didn’t follow this process and instead added Cameroon to the French Union, which was in line with its colonial policy of making a “Greater France.” On April 10, 1948, the UPC came into existence. Its secretary general, Reuben Um Nyobe, led the party to adopt a radical nationalist platform that called for instant independence and reunion with the British Cameroons.

The French were angry about this kind of program because it went against their strategy of integrating colonies after World War II. The UPC made things even worse for the French by connecting with the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, which is a branch of the French Communist Party.

It was now time for France and the UPC to play tug-of-war. This led to constant harassment and discrimination against the UPC. The UPC faced arrests and threats, preventing its members from winning any local elections. In response, the UPC held a series of violent protests in May 1955 to try to get the French out of Cameroon.

At the end of the month, the colonial government restored order after 26 deaths and 176 injuries. The French government banned the UPC on July 13, 1955. Because of this, there was a long-lasting rebellion from 1955 to 1971. It started in Basaland and ended in Bamileke country. The French Cameroons had to become independent because of changes in the area and around the world.

Moderate Cameroon nationalism slowly adopted the UPC’s ideas, and France came under more and more pressure from around the world, especially from the anticolonial bloc in the UN, to make changes to Cameroon’s government. It was also because France lost Indochina that they had to give freedom to the Associated States of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1954, as well as to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956.

These concessions indicated that a significant issue could arise in French Sub-Saharan Africa if the law did not undergo swift changes. So, on June 23, 1956, the French parliament passed the Loi-cadre (Enabling Act), which made it possible for the country to have its own government. Cameroon had to hold new elections on December 23, 1956, because of the Loi- Cadre.

The UPC nationalists refrained from participating in the last elections before independence due to their party’s continued ban. Without the UPC, it was only natural for such an election to lead to the formation of a mostly moderate and pro-French assembly. The assembly chose Andre-Marie Mbida, leader of the Démocrates Camerounais, on May 15, 1957, and the French high commissioner made him prime minister.

The government punished Mbida and removed him from office on February 17, 1958, due to his strong opposition to independence and reunification. Ahmadou Ahidjo, who took over after him, was smart to follow the trend of the time by publicly supporting the nationalist goals of independence and reunification, and France agreed.

The French government declared the independence of the French Cameroons on January 1, 1960, in front of Dag Hammerskjold, who was Secretary-General of the UN. They named Ahidjo as the first prime minister. In a strange turn of events, the UPC, which fought and died for freedom, did not end up benefiting from it. The French Cameroons got their freedom in 1960, and in 1961, they joined back up with the British Southern Cameroons.

Reunification was the dream, the fight, and the attempt to bring German Cameroon back within the borders it had from 1884 to 1916. People wanted to bring the British and French Cameroons back together because they had both lived as colonies in Germany.

The Anglo-French partition painfully split up families and ethnic groups living on the frontier, and later efforts by Britain and France to limit the area between their countries only made things worse. During the years between the wars, educated Cameroonians sent pleas against the division of their country. But it wasn’t until after World War II that the idea of a reunion became popular and was pushed hard.

The UPC pushed for unity hard, and French Cameroonian exiles spread the idea in British Cameroon. The UPC was aware of French colonial despotism and France’s unwillingness to help the region move towards self-government. The UPC believed that by incorporating reunification into their political platform, they could find a way to help the French Cameroons get ahead in the UN. Dr. E. M. L. Endeley was the first well-known British Cameroonian who worked to unite the country.

Endeley’s Cameroon National Federation met with the UN Visiting Mission for the first time in December 1949. They spoke out against the British colonial system of running the British Cameroons as an extension of Nigeria and asked for the union of the two Cameroons.
Endeley started the Cameroon National Congress in 1953 so that the country could fight for its freedom.

In 1954, Britain gave the Southern Cameroons a semi-independent regional position within the Nigerian federation, and Endeley began to back away from reunification. John Ngu Foncha led reunificationists who left Endeley and started the Kamerun National Democratic Party in 1955. Its stated goals were to break away from Nigeria and reunite with the rest of the country.

On February 11, 1961, in the Southern Cameroons, and on February 12, 1961, in the North Cameroons, the UN held plebiscites to decide the political future of the British Cameroons.
With 235,571 votes to 97,741 votes, the Southern Cameroons easily chose to rejoin Nigeria, while the Northern Cameroons chose to stay in Nigeria. The Southern Cameroons gained their freedom on October 1, 1961, when they returned to the independent Republic of Cameroon.

Also Read: Burkina Faso Independence: The Incredible Journey to Independence

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African Empires

Kingdom Of Burundi: The Incredible Precolonial History In The 19th Century

By Historian June 9, 2024

Kingdom Of Burundi

The precolonial kingdom of Burundi grew from a small dynasty tucked between two politically stronger and larger regions, Rwanda and Buha, into a strong political force of its own over the course of the nineteenth century. It was situated in fertile highlands that overlooked the northeastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.

As the century came to a close, the Kingdom Of Burundi was not only the strongest of the kingdoms along the Great Lakes corridor, but it was also the only African country that could keep slave traders, missionaries, and colonial soldiers out. Two wise and long-ruling kings, Ntare Rugamba (around 1800–1850) and Mwezi Gisabo (around 1857–1908), helped Burundi rise to power in the 1800s.

Ntare Rugamba, a brave warrior, expanded the kingdom’s borders by conquering new lands. He set up a new territorial framework for the kingdom that his son and successor, Mwezi Gisabo, worked to solidify legally. People think that Mwezi’s rule was the peak of the Burundian royalty.

Military planning and cooperation between fathers and sons marked the Kingdom Of Burundi’s rise to power in the 1800s. The sons of aristocrats, court officials, and regional leaders formed the Abatezi (“attackers”), Ntare Rugamba’s carefully trained personal guard. They were the core of an army that could grow to several thousand people during wartime. Prince Rwasha, Ntare’s son, led the Abatezi at their peak in the 1840s. His plan was to attack with a main group of archers, while surrounding the enemy from the sides.

When the Abatezi fought this way, they were successful against both small regional kingdoms and the bigger armies of Rwanda and Buha-Buyungu. In victory, Rwasha’s troops focused on taking cattle instead of killing people. But if they caught the other boss, they were likely to cut off his head and set his house on fire.

To take over newly conquered areas, Ntare Rugamba set up a political and administrative structure called the Baganwa system of territorial control. In this system, he gave his royal sons (the Baganwa) and his wives, ritualists, clients, and close friends the power to rule. With permission from the king to claim land, these possible rulers went to faraway places to try to set up their own “courts.”

If they were able to get established, they worked to weaken the power of local leaders or families in order to serve the king’s interests. At the same time, they looked out for their own interests by making local families give gifts or tributes as a way of showing support for the government. Through this method, a king’s favorite client who had done work for the king for many years could be in charge of several separate territories, with each territory being a “reward.”

During Ntare Rugamba’s rule, his older children, especially his sons Rwasha, Ndivyariye, Birori, and Busumano, owned the most land. Ntare gave lands to loyal followers, but he also directly ruled many domains, many of which were in great spots in the heartland. He gained wealth from these things, such as animals, food, drinks (like honey wine), and well-made items (like bark cloth), which he could give to loyal subjects or redistribute at court. He also received these items as gifts. The king was powerful because he was spiritually strong, not because he was strong in battle or with money.

The word “king” (mwami) comes from the verb kwama, which means “to be fertile.” His people saw the king as the embodiment of fertility. For the people of Burundi, the mwami was a living charm that brought them happiness. A mysterious aspect of the king’s power was associated with a series of images and practices designed to showcase and bolster his enigmatic attributes.

This included a unique language for referring to the king’s body parts; a complex collection of charms, including a royal bull, a royal python, and sacred drums; and an annual ceremony called umuganuro (the first fruits or sorghum festival held in December), which blessed the king and brought his sacred side back to life.

Ritualists were in charge of both handling a dead king’s body and naming a new king. Most people are familiar with the court rituals from the era of Mwezi Gisabo, the last king to maintain them before pressures from Christianity and colonialism halted them. There is a lot of debate and secrecy about how Mwezi Gisabo was born and how he became ubwami, which is the mwami’s office represented by the drum, which is a Burundian symbol of royal power.

Mwezi Gisabo, one of the youngest royal children, was named Ubwami instead of his brother Twarereye, who was supposed to be the heir. This decision led the supporters of each brother to take up arms on the battlefield, ultimately resulting in Twarereye’s death. During these wars, Mwezi, who was too young to rule, lived at court with his mother Vyano and oldest brother Ndivyariye, who were his tutors and ran the country for him.

When Mwezi Gisabo became an adult, he took up guns to make his guardian Ndivyariye give up power, even though he didn’t want to. This fight between brothers happened in the late 1860s and led to a grudge between their children and grandchildren, the Batare and the Bezi, that affected Burundian politics for another 100 years.

As early as within his own family, Mwezi Gisabo faced challenges to his power. These set the tone for his long and difficult rule. But a strong group at court, a skilled royal guard, and a smart and powerful group of sorcerers, ritualists, and advisors supported Mwezi Gisabo. He was able to handle many risks to his power and the safety of his kingdom.

Wanyamwezi, militarized and seeking expansion, launched an attack from the east in 1884; Arab-Swahili slave traders attempted to enter Burundi from the west and south beginning in the 1850s; long-standing rival Rwanda, with whom he maintained a tense border to the north (1880s–1890s); aspirants for dominance; and shifts in the environment and diseases (1870s–1890s).

Mwezi dealt with all of these problems and stayed in power. Even though Mwezi faced many threats from outside his land during his long rule, the biggest dangers came from within, from his own family. The Baganwa method of governing territory that Ntare Rugamba set up worked well for the warrior-king, but it made things very hard for his son.

The problem with it was that once the people who were given Ntare Rugamba’s power to rule settled down in more rural areas after their patron died, they and their children didn’t have much reason to stay loyal to Mwezi Gisabo, who took over as leader. So, Mwezi Gisabo should have kicked out these unreliable relatives and given their land to people who were loyal to him, like his own kids.

These fights among the Baganwa made the country unstable and full of political drama, which outsiders tried to take advantage of. With the help of internal disagreement, Germany was able to conquer other countries in the early 1900s.

Also Read: Benin Empire: The Incredible Origins and Growth of A City-State 1600s

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African History

Burkina Faso Independence: The Incredible Journey to Independence

By Historian June 6, 2024

Burkina Faso Independence

Burkina Faso Independence: Burkina Faso got its freedom from France on August 5, 1960. Since then, it has had a short-lived democratically elected government and a series of military coups. Maurice Yaméogo, the country’s first president and leader of the Rassemblement démocratique africain (African Democratic Assembly), promised big economic gains for the new country when it became independent. However, he quickly realized that he could not keep making these claims.

Protests spread throughout the country as a result of the faltering economy and election rigging. The army took control of the country in January 1966. President General Sangoulé Lamizana ruled for 15 years, gradually limiting the power of the people. Trade union unrest sparked a bloodless coup in November 1980. A group of army officers removed Colonel Saye Zerbo as president in November 1982 after he ruled for two years on charges of corruption.

When the officers took over, they named Major Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo president and Captain Thomas Sankara prime minister. The new government quickly became divided, though, and in May 1983, Ouedraogo ordered the arrest of Sankara. Sankara was well-liked by both civilians and army personnel, which was bad for the president because it kept the fractured coalition government of radicals and conservatives together.

When people tried to get rid of him, there were riots among students, workers, and police officers. A military coup removed Ouedraogo from power, taking into account Burkina Faso’s recent past. Now that Sankara was in charge, the unhappy officers who put him there took over the country and made Sankara president of the Conseil national de la révolution (CNR).

A strange mix of left-wing civilians and army officers made up the council. Sankara was only able to keep it together with strong support from the allies who got rid of Ouedraogo, such as Captain Blaise Compaoré, Captain Henri Zongo, and Major Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani.
Sankara became more well-known after telling all politicians, including himself, that the public should be able to see information about their personal bank accounts. In 1984, he had Upper Volta’s name changed to Burkina Faso, which means “land of righteous people.” He did this to give the people of the country a feeling of national pride and maybe even duty.

Through vaccine programs, public housing, and women’s rights, Sankara’s government also made a lot of progress in public health. Different parts of the CNR had different policy ideas and were growing increasingly hostile towards each other, leading to Sankara’s murder in October 1987. The killers were Compaoré supporters, and Compaoré quickly gave himself the presidency. Because Sankara was so famous and the takeover was so violent, the international community quickly condemned it, and people all over India were unhappy with it.

To strengthen his situation, Compaoré got rid of the CNR and set up the new Front populaire (FP). He tightened his control over the country even more by arresting Zongo and Lingani, two people he used to be friends with. He accused them of plotting to overthrow the government, swiftly tried them, and executed them the same evening. Following this, the government underwent a reorganization, with Compaoré assuming leadership of both the defense and security offices.

The people wrote and passed a new constitution in June 1991. According to the new constitution, the country would be a multiparty democracy, and any government that came to power through a coup would not be legitimate. Upon the formation of the Fourth Republic government in June 1991, Compaoré attempted to demonstrate a softer approach. For the first time, the minister of defense was a civilian, and some members of the opposition groups were in government.

In December 1991, there were presidential elections, but the opposition groups didn’t show up because Compaoré was still trying to be friendly. Compaoré didn’t have any opponents, and he won with only 25% of the vote. The following year, opposition groups only won 23 of the 107 places they were able to get in the National Assembly. This was mostly because they weren’t working together as a group. After five years, the opposition didn’t do much better; the ruling party took 101 of the 111 seats that were up for grabs.

In 1998, Compaoré was re-elected president with a more reasonable lead than he had had eight years before. 56% of people who were eligible to vote did, and the incumbent got 87% of the votes cast. In December 1998, authorities found Norbert Zongo, a well-known independent journalist and newspaper editor, and three of his coworkers dead. Members of the presidential guard reportedly killed them.

After these deaths, there were protests and strikes across the country, and a group of opposition and human rights groups, called the Collectif d’organisations démocratiques de masse et de partis politiques, called for an open and thorough probe. The government, taken aback by the intensity of the protests, ultimately opted to allow the courts to handle Zongo’s case and compensate the families of the deceased men.

Not until 2001 did anyone, including some people who were already in jail for other murders, face charges for the death of Zongo. In 2000, the parliament made more changes to the law that had to do with the president’s job. There was a minimum age of 35 to run for office, and candidates could only serve two terms. They also reduced term lengths from seven to five years, and only individuals were eligible to run for office.

But because these changes weren’t going to happen until after the 2002 elections, Compaoré, who turned in his army rank, could run for office again in 2005 and 2010. In the elections in May 2002, the opposition was better organized, and the Congress pour la democratie et le progrès (CDP) (which took over from the FP after 1996) lost a lot of seats. The party only won 57 of the 111 seats in the National Assembly, or 0.5 percentage points less than 50% of the votes cast.

The government reshuffled in June, replacing opposition members with CDP officials in the new 31-member cabinet. Compaoré has been in power since 1987, but he has never had the backing of the people like Sankara did. There are also rumors of planned coups that help him keep security pretty strict. The most recent plan led to the arrest of 16 people in October 2003. Among them was Norbert Tiendrebeogo, head of the Social Forces Front and a well-known opposition leader who used to support Sankara.

Also Read: Burkina Faso History: The Incredible History Of Africa’s Colonial Period

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African History

Burkina Faso History: The Incredible History Of Africa’s Colonial Period

By Historian June 3, 2024

Burkina Faso History

Burkina Faso History: In 1899, the Upper Volta lands became part of the first and second military territories. However, from 1904 to 1919, they were part of the massive settlement of Haut-Sénégal-Niger. They imposed taxes on rubber, cotton, and particularly on trade with the British colony of the Gold Coast (now Ghana). In return for cola nuts, the region sent livestock, shea butter, and cotton cloth to the Gold Coast, which later accepted French currency. At first, the taxes were in kind or in cowrie.

The 1898 deal between France and Britain set up a free trade zone from the coast to Ouagadougou. In December 1915, they discovered a “Muslim conspiracy.”. This led to trials and punishments along the middle reaches of the Black Volta, where many villages had joined the uprising. In 1916, fully armed military units swept through the region. They put down the resistance in June and July of that year.

The uprising caused Haut-Sénégal and Niger to split apart after World War I. On May 20, 1919, they founded Upper Volta (Haute-Volta), a new colony. Its city, Ouagadougou, is where its government is based. To work, the French needed people to move from these heavily populated areas to the developing areas in Côte d’Ivoire and Sudan.

Hesling was the colony’s first governor and stayed in charge until 1927. Hesling initially divided the settlement into seven districts: Bobo-Dioulasso, Dédougou, Ouagadougou, Dori, Gaoua, Fada N’Gourma, and Say. However, things quickly changed. The creation of Ouahigouya, Tenkodogo, and Kaya in 1921 and 1922, respectively, reduced the size of the Ouagadougou district. In 1927, they split Dédougou into two districts to form Boromo, and relocated Say to the colony of Niger.

The colonization scheme was based on making everyone in the colony grow cotton against their will, but this didn’t work out at all. In real life, the colonial order was full of contradictions. Every year, many Voltaques moved to the Asante country to sell animals, shea butter, and soumbala (fermented néré) in order to pay their taxes.

Along these routes, some people would work for a few months in the gold mines, on the cocoa plantations, or on the building sites that started to pop up at the end of the 1800s. The people who moved also didn’t want to have to work on roads inside the colony or find work outside of it, like on the trains between Thiès and Kayes, Kayes and Bamako, or Abidjan and Bobo-Dioulasso, or in private businesses in Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, or Senegal.

These individuals frequently endured appalling working conditions. The Great Depression of 1930 exemplified the severity of these working conditions. The drought of 1932 exacerbated an already severe state of famine. On September 5, 1932, a decree divided the colony among its three neighbors, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, and Niger. The largest piece went to Côte d’Ivoire, which got Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. Sudan received Yatenga, while Niger seized control of Gulmu and Liptako. So, the main thing that Upper Volta exported was its workers, who moved to the growing areas that bordered the land.

From 1932 on, the Office du Niger au Soudan put out calls for people to work on infrastructure projects like canals or the Markala Dam. Some people gave an answer. However, Côte d’Ivoire hired more people to work on building projects in the port of Abidjan and on cocoa, coffee, and banana farms.

In 1932, French West Africa established the Inspection du Travail (labor inspectorate) to safeguard the interests of workers. However, it mostly just helped employers in the south get easier access to workers in the north. On the other hand, the workers desired to relocate to the Gold Coast due to the higher pay and superior treatment they received there.

Strangely enough, during this time, people in what used to be Upper Volta developed a strong sense of nationalism. This prompted traditional chiefs and intellectual class members to advocate for the revival of the colony. In 1937, they were able to get Haute (Upper) Côte d’Ivoire created as a new municipal unit. The new municipal unit encompassed Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, under the leadership of an individual from Abidjan.

The French Union began holding elections in 1945, following the decisions made at the Brazzaville Conference. At that time, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, and Niger still shared the Voltaque. Felix Houphouët-Boigny was chosen to represent Haute Côte d’Ivoire. He was the leader of the Rassemblement démocratique africain (RDA, or African Democratic Rally) and made the law that ended forced labor. Houphouët-Boigny was very important in rebuilding Upper Volta.

He worked out a deal with the traditional leader, called the Moog-naaba, to send Mossi workers to the plantations of Côte d’Ivoire in exchange for his help rebuilding the settlement. However, upon its revival in 1947, he employed it against members of his own party, the RDA, who faced accusations of collaboration with the Communist Party and mistreatment by the British government. The construction of a train line from Bobo-Dioulasso to Ouagadougou, completed in 1954, significantly transformed the Upper Volta’s economy.

This opened up a new way for people to move toward the coast, and soon there were more workers going to Côte d’Ivoire than going to the Gold Coast. For the years 1950–1954 and 1954–1958, the French Four-Year Plans included objectives to improve both subsistence farming and cash crops. The Fonds d’Investissement pour le Développement Economique et Social (Investment Funds for Economic and Social Development) and the Fonds d’équipement rural et de développement économique et social (Funds for Rural Infrastructure and Economic and Social Development) largely made these plans possible.

Burkina Faso History Burkina Faso History

The societies de prévoyance, which means “foresight societies,” that were already in place changed into sociétés mutuelles de production rurale, which means “mutual societies for rural production.” They had a backup fund to help them live. However, each year’s groundnut exports failed to reach the anticipated 15,000 tons. Cotton exports stayed between 3,000 and 4,000 tons, shea exports stayed between 5,000 and 10,000 tons, and sesame and sisal exports stayed below 500 tons.

Growing rice, expanding cattle farming, and exporting goods to the Gold Coast and Côte d’Ivoire were some of the positive outcomes. The shea-processing plant near Boromo shut down in 1954, and after that, Upper Volta didn’t do much manufacturing. Poura only produced a few kilograms of gold. It was important to collect customs duties and money sent home by foreign workers because, by 1960, exports brought in 75% of tax money but only 4% of gross domestic product.

For instance, investments accounted for 17% of spending in 1958. Only a 5 billion franc grant from the French government balanced the budget. The number of salaried workers in the private and public sectors rose to about 20,000, and labor unions formed. In 1957, the establishment of the Assemblée territoriale (Territorial Assembly) and the Conseil de gouvernement (Council of Government) marked the initial steps towards establishing democratic institutions. These were the main things that happened in the last few years before independence.

When Ouezzin Coulibaly, who was vice president of the council (or deputy prime minister), died in 1958, Maurice Yaméogo took over as boss. In 1960, he became the first president of an independent Upper Volta.

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African Empires

Benin Empire: The Incredible Origins and Growth of A City-State 1600s

By Historian May 25, 2024

Benin Empire History

Benin Empire: Forests east of the Volta and west of the Niger have been safe havens for many small groups of people for a long time. Some of these didn’t have written records of how they became important countries, but oral history, along with archaeological and linguistic evidence, has helped historians piece together the past.

One of these groups started the kingdom of Benin, which is in what is now southwestern Nigeria. People who speak the Edo language inhabit this area. At first, groups of families who hunted, gathered, and farmed together made societies that were more complicated. Family ties along patrilineal lines centered these societies around villages. The parts of society that make up social life, like religion and traditions, land rights, and running the government, were already in place.

Invaders from the grasslands of Sudan came to the area in the early second millennium arrived and moved south and southwest on horses because the weather was getting worse. They may have been fleeing their own country’s conversion to Islam. They stayed in the area and married local elders’ daughters. More growth happened through agglomeration than through war.

Villages turned into towns with walls around them. Graham Connah’s excavations have revealed that these walls were more like a honeycomb of straight earthworks that marked out an area than defensive fortifications. This makes me think that Benin City may have started out as a group of small villages. Each one was loyal to the king and had its own farmlands surrounded by walls and ditches.

In the farmland near Benin City, there is a set of walls that look like they were built by a lot of people because of how tall and big they are. A line of kings known as ogiso organized society in a hierarchy. A chief, responsible for all, divided the kingdom into numerous groups that paid tribute.

Seven powerful nobles, known as uzama, held posts passed down from generation to generation under the king. The king’s palace was both the spiritual heart and the power of time. This city-state didn’t make money through trade, but through payment. Its income was mostly based on farming, especially yams and palm oil. Still, as cities grew, traders and artists became more and more important.

In the eleventh century, the growth of trade had a big effect on the progress of technology, the accumulation of wealth, and the organization of state institutions. Around the year 1000, people were already growing cotton and weaving it. In the middle Iron Age, there was a lot of trade going northward in salt, cloth, metal, beads, and pottery.

It is believed that Ere, the second ogiso (tenth century), introduced numerous religious images to Japan, including human heads crafted from wood and terracotta. By Ere’s time, Benin society had advanced to a point where more people could engage in activities beyond survival.

Copper, which was used in metal and brass sculptures instead of wood and terracotta at the time, clearly shows that luxury goods were traded over long distances, since the closest copper sources were in the Saharan Aïr Massif and the Sudan around Darfur. Before 1300, there were a lot of copper items in Benin, which shows that trade was big and had been going on for a while.

Benin used the lost wax method of casting brass. People from the north may have brought it to Ife when they founded the city and subsequently spread its use from there. Prior to the 1400s, palaces were the exclusive locations for casting brass to create sculptured heads and other religious items for royal shrines. Benin legend says that around the year 1300, the people of Edo decided that the ogiso was no longer a good leader and asked Oluhe, king of Ife, to give them a king. Ife was the area’s spiritual center.

He sent his son Oranmiyan, who only stayed in Benin long enough to have a child with the daughter of a chief there. Their son, Eweka I, became Benin’s first oba (king). As a result, Oranmiyan was the leader of a dynasty that would last for more than 600 years. This seems likely because Benin’s oral history talks about the past in terms of royal time, linking important events to the reigns of specific kings.

Some scholars think that the story of Oranyan’s marriage to a chiefly Benin family might have been made up to hide the fact that outsiders had taken over Benin and made them their rulers at the time. Even if the story isn’t true, it seems like it has a clear message.

It says the dynasty comes from another world, but the Edo people wanted it to rule, and their society helped it grow. Eweka I’s rule was mostly quiet, but the royal power grew. It got easier to divide up work in town as time went on, and society became more stratified. But the Uzama held on to their ancient rights and ruled Eweka I, so basic social and political organization didn’t change much.

Before Ewedo’s rule (around 1255), the oba didn’t seem to be able to show their power. Because Ewedo knew that changes in rituals had deep meaning, he started by telling the uzama they couldn’t bring their ceremonial swords into his house or sit down in front of him. He then reorganized the army, took away the Uzama’s inherited right to run for national office, and put their choice of people in key roles. This allowed him to surround himself with managers who had to answer only to him.

Archaeological evidence shows that Benin continued to grow over the course of his rule as long-distance trade grew. In fact, bronze statues proliferated, and their use extended beyond altar pieces. Plaques embedded in palace walls or house pillars also utilized this metal. The kingdom of Benin’s Middle Ages ended when Eware the Great (1440–1480), the most famous oba, took the throne, and the Portuguese came to rule.

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Featured

Pan Africanism: The Incredible Conference That Changed Everything, 1958

By Historian May 23, 2024

Pan Africanism

Pan Africanism: Kwame Nkrumah, who was prime minister of Ghana when that country got its independence on March 6, 1957, said that the Gold Coast’s independence didn’t mean anything unless it was linked to the freedom of all of Africa. Under Nkrumah’s leadership, Ghana became synonymous with Pan Africanism following its independence.

African colonial states linked their desire for freedom and continental unity from the All-African People’s Conference in December 1958 onwards. When the meeting asked the colonial powers to give their African colonies the right to self-determination, it changed the relationship between Africa and Europe.

After a meeting of independent African countries in Accra in April 1958, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Republic worked together on plans for a bigger meeting of African states in December 1958. Between December 5 and 13, 1958, Kwame Nkrumah invited 300 people from 28 African countries who were leaders of political parties and work unions to meet in Accra.

People from the United States, Canada, China, Denmark, India, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom also came to watch. The attendees included representatives from France, Angola, Basutoland, Cameroon, Chad, Dahomey, Ethiopia, and France. Somaliland, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, French Central Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South West Africa, Tanganyika, Togoland, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zanzibar all sent representatives to the meeting.

Only Ethiopia and Tunisia, out of all of Africa, remained under some form of colonial rule. Felix Monmie from the Basutoland Congress Party, M. Roberto Holden from Angola, Horace M. Bond, head of Lincoln University, and Marguerite Cartwright, an African-American author and journalist, were some of the important people who came.

The planning group picked Tom Mboya, who is the general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, to be the conference’s head. In his plenary address, Mboya compared the meeting to the Berlin meeting seventy-four years earlier, asserting that Africans were tired of subjugation. He believed that Africans should be in charge of their own lives, so he asked both the US and the USSR to keep Africa out of the Cold War.

Mboya wanted the conquered states to get political power as soon as possible and told Africans to stay away from becoming a Balkanized mess. The famous African-American W.E.B. Du Bois also spoke at the session. During his long life, he fought for Pan-Africanism. His wife read his speech for him because he was sick and 91 years old.

Du Bois told the conference that Pan Africanism meant that each country had to give up some of its heritage for the good of the whole continent. He said that by making this sacrifice, the African people would gain their honor and lose nothing but their chains.

During the conference’s working session, five committees talked about and passed resolutions on topics such as colonialism and imperialism, borders, federations, and federations; racialism and unfair laws and practices; tribalism; religious separatism; and traditional institutions. There was also a resolution on creating a permanent organization.

The group on imperialism decided that economic exploitation had to stop, and they stood behind freedom fighters in Africa. The group advocated for freedom for regions still under colonial rule, including Kenya, the Union of South Africa, Algeria, Rhodesia, Angola, and Mozambique, all governed by foreigners who had permanently settled in Africa.

The committee on borders, boundaries, and federations also wanted to see the end of white settlement in Africa. They were also against giving land away for colonial use and pushed the idea of a United States of Africa. The racial relations committee decided to cut off all diplomatic and economic ties with racist countries like South Africa, the Portuguese colonies, and Rhodesia.

The committee also demanded the removal of the UN order that placed South West Africa under the Union of South Africa. The committee on tribe, religious separatism, and traditional institutions perceived these factors as impeding Africa’s freedom and advocated for the provision of additional tools to political groups and trade unions to educate the populace.

The group in charge of setting up the permanent organization wanted the All-African People’s Conference to become permanent and have a professional office in Accra. The group’s goals were to help Africans understand each other better, speed up their freedom, get the rest of the world to speak out against the rejection of their basic rights, and build a sense of community among Africans.

The conference’s host, Kwame Nkrumah, ended his speech by stressing how important it was for Africa to become independent and form a community. He also said that future economic and social rebuilding in Africa should be based on socialism.

In his closing speech, Tom Mboya, the conference chairman, told the people that the conference had to deal with colonialism and European minorities in East and South Africa. He also said that how Europeans felt about African freedom would determine whether they would turn violent.

The conference had a huge effect on the fight for independence in Africa, and many of the delegates went back home to work even harder for independence. For example, Congolese Patrice Lumumba was a participant in the conference who not many people knew about, but when he got back home, he spoke to a large group of people in Leopoldville.

Without a doubt, the ideas that people like Lumumba brought back to Belgium sped up the process of giving the Congo its independence. The conference’s ideas moved many African countries, instilling confidence in them. By the end of 1960, 18 more African countries had become independent.

More importantly, pan Africanism went from being just an idea to being a real thing. The discussion that occurred after the meeting helped to create the Organization of African Unity.

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Biography

Chinua Achebe: The Incredible Biography Of An African Writer, 1930–2013

By Historian May 21, 2024

Chinua Achebe Biography

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe is generally considered to be the most widely read African writer. When he started college, he started calling himself Chinua Achebe. He grew up during a time when the more traditional Igbo way of life and the way of life of those who had become Christians coexisted. Both of these lifestyles have influenced his writing.

While the stories of his native past are all over his writing, the fact that his family was Christian allowed him to go to one of Nigeria’s most prestigious colleges during colonial times. Later, he went to Ibadan University to continue his education. He started out as a medical student but quickly moved to literature. Achebe’s desire to be a writer began when he read Mister Johnson (1939) by Joyce Cary while he was in college.

Achebe found the portrayal of Africa in a book by a person with limited knowledge of African languages and cultures to be completely unacceptable. The success of that book astounded Achebe, but it also motivated him to begin writing what would eventually become a series of books about how Igbo communities changed when they came into contact with European traditions.

There have been many times when Achebe talked about why he wrote these books. He says that his goal is to give African readers works that show that Africa’s history “was not one long night of savagery” (p. 45) in “The Novelist As Teacher,” which is part of Hopes and Impediments. Achebe asserts that oral traditions, such as proverbs, transmit profound knowledge, enabling African societies to take pride in their historical achievements.

In a different piece in the same book, Achebe harshly attacks the underlying racism in Joseph Conrad’s writing, especially in Heart of Darkness (1902). While Achebe has written essays, it is mostly his fiction, especially his first three books, that has made him famous. One common theme in Achebe’s writing is the connection between old and new traditions.

nstead of throwing out all practices, Achebe wants the best parts of both old and new to come together. This is why he says an incorporation is better than a revolution. In 1958, he published his first book, Things Fall Apart, which chronicles life in an Igbo town where traditions persist.
Missionaries’ entrance, on the other hand, changes everything. Some people in the community support them because they are concerned about leaving twins behind. The village quickly falls into a state of chaos. No Longer at Ease (1960) is about modern-day Nigeria and the problems people face when they come back to Nigeria after learning abroad.

After Nigeria gained its independence, they picked up Western habits and ideals that don’t work for life. A young man from the town paid for him to study in Britain, then returns and gets a job in an office. The main character in the tragic story is under too much stress. His town wants him to repay the money he spent on his education, and his parents dislike his choice of wife because she is untouchable.

Chinua Achebe receives a payoff and loses his job as a result. In Arrow of God (1964), nestled between the first two books of Achebe’s “African Trilogy,” a village chief-priest strives to fuse his personal beliefs with the innovative concepts of British colonialism. Even though he tries hard, the main character also fails terribly.

Chinua Achebe’s fourth book, A Man of the People (1966), got a lot of attention because it predicted the military coup that happened at the same time it came out. The play is a bitter spoof on the moral decay of the people who run Africa’s new countries. Another theme that runs through Achebe’s writings is the refusal to think and fight in terms of two or more options. He says that claims to absolute facts, which are common in Europe, are mostly pointless.

This way of thinking might also explain why, after being interested in the new idea at first, Chinua Achebe joined many other Anglophone writers in attacking the mostly Francophone Négritude movement, which put too much emphasis on African culture and not enough on foreign elements. In this case too, Chinua Achebe sees himself as the go-between. When Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Chinua Achebe became involved in the political future of the Igbo people, whom he backed in their fight for freedom from Nigeria.

After Biafra gave up without conditions in 1970, Achebe left Nigeria for the US, where he taught at different colleges from 1972 to 1976. While these troubled years were going on, Achebe couldn’t work on longer pieces of writing, so he focused on shorter ones. He wrote many essays on politics, education, and literature. He also wrote short stories, poems, and books for kids.

As the editor of Heinemann Publishers’ “African Writers Series” from 1962 to 1972, Chinua Achebe played a key role in the development of African writing, which was still a new genre at the time. Together with the artist Christopher Okigbo, who passed away in August 1967, Achebe published the magazine Okike, which showcased new African writing. Chinua Achebe thinks that the writer’s main job in modern African cultures is to teach. As a result, he was against the idea that art is only a beautiful medium.

Chinua Achebe continued involvement with Nigeria’s problems is a big part of both “The Trouble with Nigeria” (1983), which tried to tell voters about the state of their country and government, and “Home and Exile,” his intellectual biography that came out in 2000 and has a lot of information about Achebe’s early experiences with literature.

The question of whether writing truly African literature in African languages is appropriate is currently under debate. Chinua Achebe thinks that the colonial languages can help bring the newly independent African nations together by providing a single language in a country with many languages.

Also Read: W. E. B Du Bois And the Pan Africanism Movement You Should Know

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