Post-Colonial Africa

Between 1956 and 1968, more than thirty African countries gained independence. The celebrations were genuine. In Accra, Kinshasa, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam, crowds filled the streets as colonial flags came down and new ones went up. People wept. Bands played. Politicians gave speeches about freedom and dignity.

Then the morning after arrived, and with it, the inventory of what colonial rule had actually left behind.

The borders were the most obvious problem. European powers had drawn them at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and in subsequent negotiations, using rivers, lines of latitude, and the limits of their own military reach as guides. These lines sliced through ethnic groups, lumped together peoples with no shared language or political tradition, and separated communities that had traded and intermarried for centuries. Nigeria alone contained over 250 distinct ethnic groups. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, a territory the size of Western Europe, held more than 200. These were not nations in any organic sense. They were administrative units designed for extraction.