Decolonization of Africa quiz: 5 questions

France’s 1956 loi-cadre had already devolved power to African ministers, so independence was the last step of a transfer largely made; the collapse of de Gaulle’s Community turned autonomy into full independence across French Africa at once.

The settler equation: where Europeans had put down roots, property and political weight, majority rule meant losing everything, so they fought. The same logic made Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa violent — and Ghana, with few settlers, peaceful.

Africa’s leaders chose to freeze the borders inherited from empire — a conservative bargain that almost certainly prevented continent-wide secession wars, at the cost of locking peoples inside artificial states. It is debated to this day.

A colony left unprepared, a copper secession bankrolled by Belgian mining interests, an elected premier murdered with Western connivance when he turned to Moscow — the crisis is the clearest case of African self-rule subordinated to Cold War and corporate interests.

At Cuito Cuanavale (1987–88) South Africa’s largest offensive was fought to a standstill, shattering the myth of white military invincibility. The negotiated linkage — Cuban withdrawal from Angola for Namibian independence — freed the last colony in 1990.