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50 Years Ago in West Africa

Catholic cathedral from Dakar

Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72) established the Convention Peoples Party in 1949, one of the major movements in West Africa seeking independence from the European colonial powers. While West Africa saw little fighting in the Second World War, West African troops in the French and British forces fought bravely around the world, and the post- war period saw a rise in African nationalism. Nkrumah in 1957 becomes president of Ghana, the former Gold Coast and the first former colony in Black Africa to gain its independence. By 1960, Nigeria was independent, with most French West African colonies also becoming independent that year. Some of the new nations included Cameroun (also spelled Cameroon), Congo, Gabon, Chad and the Central African Republic.

The rise of this new African consciousness was also expressed through a new generation of African writers and thinkers. Mariama Ba (1929-1981), was one of French West Africa's most significant feminists, and an accomplished teacher and writer. She was born into an important family in Senegal. Her father was the first Minister of Health after Senegal, a French colony, gained its independence. Mariama, against the will of her grandparents, went to school--this was unusual in Senegal at this time as only boys were usually sent to school.

A scene from modern Dakar, capital of Senegal, showing the Catholic cathedral.

In English West Africa, the most well known author of this generation is Chinua Achebe, born in Nigeria in 1930. His first novel, published in 1958, is called Things Fall Apart, and deals with the impact of colonialism on the Igbo people of Nigeria.

The Pan-African movement, which had it origins in the United States in the 1920s, comes under the leadership of native Africans after the Second World War. These leaders included Nkrumah, Kenyatta and Azikiwe. In 1958, the 1st Conference of Independent African States was held in Accra, the capital of Ghana. The goal of the movement was the liberation of the entire continent and to create more co-operation between all African states.

The internal political and economic development in the new African states was hindered by a lack of experienced leaders and under-developed economies--the lasting effects from the decades of colonial exploitation by the European states. Few native Africans had been allowed to serve in senior military and government posts, while most colonial economies had been geared to the production and export of a single product or resource. As well, the colonial borders, which now became the borders of the new states, did not reflect the traditional political and ethnic divisions. The results were a rise in dictatorships and civil wars, one of the most serious of which took place in Zaire, the former Belgian Congo, between 1960-65.

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