[MUSIC] Hi, and welcome back to the course, African development, from the past to the present. My name is Ellen Hillbom, and I am a Professor in economic history of Lund University. The theme of this lecture is liberalization and independence from roughly the 1930s to the 1970s. I will try to summarize this drawn out and varied process the best I can. Of course, it was a great and important political event for the African populations to regain their self-determination. But I would not say that it necessarily was a significant break point in terms of changing existing social and economic structures. While the new leaders intensified the strategies for economic and social development that was started by the colonial gatekeeping states, they did not initially fundamentally reform them. Although there were exceptions to this generalization, for example, the new African socialism under President Nyerere in Tanzania. Protests in the African colonies against the colonial powers emerged already in the 1930s and 1940s. It was primarily led by urban organizations, such as trade unions. These urban wage workers lived more directly under the colonial rule compared to the subsistence farmers in the remote rural areas. During the Second World War, the colonial powers relied on the colonies to produce food and provide soldiers. The colonies were particularly important for the French resistance under General de Gaulle, as they, unlike the core of France itself, were never occupied by Nazi Germany. In addition, the Allies fought the war to defend democracy and the equal value of all people. This made it morally difficult to defend their continued subjugation of other people and keeping their colonies. After the war, the demands for independence intensified. France and Great Britain, the two dominant colonial powers, adopted different response strategies. France did not wish to consent to independence and continued to try to get its African subjects to remain within the Greater France. In the North African colonies with large French populations, for example Algeria, the independence struggle became very violent. Meanwhile, Great Britain started planning for the handover of political power as early as in 1946. But the British government was later surprised by the speed of the independence process. The settlers in specific British colonies were more reluctant. And in some colonies, for example Kenya, the independence struggle was very much about the control over land. But no major land reforms were carried out because the large plantation owners were too powerful to be threatened by the African small scale farmers. The Belgian state showed little interest in giving independence as long as the colonies continued to generate incomes. But in the mid 1950s, growth in the Belgian Congo began to stagnate, the economic interest declined, and political opposition grew. As a result, preparations for independence began and was even speeded up in 1959. Meanwhile, the military dictatorship in Portugal had no intention of giving up their colonial territories. And the populations of Angola and Mozambique had to take up arms to fight for their independence. The independence struggle was headed by a new generation of African politicians who had been educated in Europe. For example, the future president Seretse Khama in Botswana, Léopold Senghor in Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and Hastings Banda in Malawi. They had learned about political ideologies from liberalism to socialism during their stay in Europe. And they were ready to head the liberation movement and to take over and rule the independent countries. Once the ball started rolling, change happened quite quickly. Ghana became independent in 1957. After South Africa, which became independent already in 1910, this was the first country in Africa South of the Sahara to gain independence. Subsequently, in rapid succession during the 1950s and 1960s, one country after another broke loose from the British, French, and Belgian empires. The Portuguese colonies, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola, followed later in 1974 and 1975. Last out was Namibia, which was a South African colony. Namibia became independent in 1990. However, independence did not necessarily mean that there was majority rule. In South Africa and today's Zimbabwe, the colonial oppression was replaced by minority governance. In 1994, South Africa was the last country to have the majority rule. In certain cases, independence was preceded by a war of liberation. The French colonies in North Africa, for example Algeria, experienced much more violence and resistance from the European descendants compared to the territories south of the Sahara. In the Portuguese colonies, Mozambique and Angola, the military dictatorship in Portugal refused to give up, and a liberation war followed. In those states in Southern Africa, where the minority of European descent refused to share power with the Indigenous majority, as in South Africa and Zimbabwe, there was also organized armed liberation struggles. That having been said, liberation wars were rather the exception than the rule. In most countries, the transition to independence took place peacefully based on negotiations and referendums. In some cases, unfortunately, independence was instead the beginning of violent struggles for power. The violent civil wars and bloody coup d'état that we have witnessed for decades after independence, for example, in countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mozambique, have been conflicts between African groups within independent states. They have erupted after the colonial powers withdrew, when it was time for the various African interest parties to unite around governing the new nation and to share resources amongst themselves. The desperation with which politicians, freedom fighters, and warlords have fought either to retain or to acquire political power can at least partly be traced to the economic structures of the gatekeeping state. When a country lays just one enormous golden egg and it is in the form of state revenues, then the control over the state means control over the meaningful economic resources of that country. Most territories and colonial administrations were constructed as nation states. And the national borders survived the independence movements, power struggles, and civil wars. When one compares maps of Africa's colonial territories with Africa's independent states, they are remarkably the same. One exception is French West Africa, where the colonial provinces became the basis for seven independent states, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal. The gatekeeping state's need for export revenues as its principle source of income contributed to the new leader's desire to maintain their borders intact. It has been impossible for regions rich in natural resources or export crops to break away and form independent states. The best known example of an attempt to succeed is perhaps Biafra's struggle for independence from Nigeria. Here the Igbo, who controlled the eastern part of the country, called for independence in 1967. This was not accepted by the Nigerian state. And after three years of war, Biafra was forced to capitulate and return to being part of Nigeria. For the Igbo population, the Biafran War was a humanitarian catastrophe. The famine in Biafra attracted international attention and became the first African humanitarian emergency that was widely noted internationally and raised foreign aid. [MUSIC]
