The speech to the South African parliament on 3 February 1960 about a wind blowing through the continent (1960)
Harold Macmillan's "wind of change" address in Cape Town.
History · The 20th century
The decolonisation of Africa
1951–1994
The end of European empire on a continent, from Libya in 1951 to majority rule in 1994
The dismantling of European colonial rule across a continent, compressed into a single generation. Libya became independent in 1951 and Ghana, in 1957, was the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to follow; 1960, the Year of Africa, brought independence to seventeen states and gave Harold Macmillan the occasion for his "wind of change" speech in Cape Town. Some transfers were negotiated, as in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanganyika; others came only after long wars, as in Algeria, Kenya, the Portuguese territories and Zimbabwe. The new states kept, almost without exception, the borders drawn by the colonial powers, a principle the Organisation of African Unity affirmed in 1964.
How to spot them
- ▸A British prime minister telling the South African parliament in February 1960 that a wind is blowing through the continent
- ▸Seventeen states becoming independent in a single year
- ▸A first prime minister of a former Gold Coast, and a body founded at Addis Ababa in 1963
- ▸A United Nations secretary-general killed in a plane crash near Ndola in 1961
- ▸A Portuguese revolution of 1974 that suddenly ends three long colonial wars
What happened
The former Gold Coast, independent on 6 March 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah (1957)
Ghana, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence.
The only territory to vote no in de Gaulle's 1958 community referendum, under Sékou Touré (1958)
Guinea, which was granted immediate independence and abruptly cut off by France.
The year in which seventeen states became independent, including Nigeria, Senegal and Madagascar (1960)
The Year of Africa.
The murder in January 1961 of a first prime minister who had taken office the previous June (1961)
Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, killed in Katanga amid the secession crisis.
The 1962 accords, signed in a spa town on Lake Geneva, that ended a war begun in 1954 (1962)
The Évian Accords, ending the Algerian War; Ahmed Ben Bella became the first president.
The Lisbon coup of April 1974 that led within eighteen months to independence for Angola and Mozambique (1974)
The Carnation Revolution, which ended Portugal's colonial wars.
The unilateral declaration of independence made by Ian Smith's government on 11 November 1965 (1965)
Rhodesia's UDI; majority rule came only with Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.
Quick-fire facts
- •Libya became independent in 1951, and Sudan, Morocco and Tunisia in 1956
- •Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first leader, was a leading Pan-Africanist; he was deposed by a coup in 1966
- •The Congo crisis brought the UN operation ONUC; Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash near Ndola in 1961 while flying to negotiate over Katanga
- •The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962 and helped bring down the French Fourth Republic in 1958
- •In Kenya the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s was followed by independence in 1963 under Jomo Kenyatta
- •The Organisation of African Unity was founded at Addis Ababa on 25 May 1963 and became the African Union in 2002
- •The OAU's Cairo resolution of 1964 upheld the inherited colonial borders
- •The attempted secession of Biafra from Nigeria led to civil war from 1967 to 1970
- •Namibia, administered by South Africa, became independent in 1990, and South Africa held its first non-racial elections in 1994
Drill it — 10 cards
1 / 10new card
Sources
- Martin Meredith — The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
- Frederick Cooper — Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present