Martin Meredith’s excellent book The State of Africa1 gives a concise, thorough, generally impartial and often exhilarating run-through the rollercoaster ride of African politics since the beginnings of independence in the 1950’s. A tale of tyrants, cruel conflicts and broken promises, it’s often scary but never morbid. Its conclusion, though, is striking: “Fifty years after the beginning of the independence era, Africa’s prospects are bleaker than ever before.”

Even I’m not sufficiently presumptuous to try to summarise fifty years of a continent’s history in a blog post. But I can provide a sort of reference guide, for quickly knowing a country’s basic political history. The file below doesn’t tell you any detail about famine, coup attempts, economic growth and stagnation, or tribal rivalry. But it does tell you who was colonised, under a dictator, democratic, or involved in a major war when. A host of minor transitional governments, etc. are ignored, as are some minor conflicts. And occasionally how to categorise a government has been a judgment call. Comment below if you think anything needs revising. But it’s still a useful overview of the broad narrative of Africa’s years of independence.

A History of African Independence in Ten Minutes

So what can we learn from a quick skim of the sheet?

  • Independence and democracy were never the same. As country after country celebrated independence in the 1950’s and 60’s, almost all promised a government for and of the people. Almost without exception, however, the independence leaders - some former elected politicians, some military leaders, some hand-picked by the former colonial power - quickly descended into dictatorship, often with a socialist program. Two decades of tyranny and economic stagnation began.
  • Since the end of the cold war, Democracy is on the march. Scroll along to the early 1990’s and skim down the sheet. There’s a lot of green, right? The end of the cold war in 1990-1 brought an uptick in public and international pressure on dictatorial governments in Africa. And the American, British and Russian governments, who had propped up various tyrants for strategic reasons, suddenly withdrew support. The result, throughout the 1990’s, is a succession of dictatorships, from Ethiopia to Tanzania, an explosions of elections.
  • …but it has a long way to go. There’s a lot of dark green amongst the light - meaning many “elected” governments are truly no more democratic than the military rulers they replaced. What’s more, the downfall of old leaders has in many cases, from Congo to Burundi, blown the lid off old ethnic and tribal tensions, prompting a new wave of civil wars across the continent. So although groups such as the African Commission are right to point out that democracy is taking root again in Africa, it’s important not to get too relaxed. And my coding is concerned only with elections. You score a light-green ranking if you’re elected in free and fair multiparty elections, and more African countries meet that standard now than ever before. But on other other measures, like freedom of the press, the picture is more bleak. The think-tank Freedom House labels only a handful of African states as truly “free.”
    1. Known as The Fate Of Africa in the US.

    • This main narrative - of independence collapsing quickly into tyranny, before democracy shakily took hold in the 1990’s - is important to keep in mind as we go on to discuss the history of aid, debt, and so on.

    Have a look through.Maybe stick it on your wall. And for God’s sake, tell me if you think I’ve got anything wrong.