Most historical events have some unintended consequences. It is in this sense that the European Second World War made a contribution to the decolonisation and political liberation of Africa.
In 1885 at the Berlin Conference, the most powerful European countries, the British, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, divided the continent amongst themselves.
However, Africa’s involvement in the two world wars helped fuel the struggle for independence from colonial rule. This was partly because participation of Africans in these wars exposed them to ideas of self-determination and independent rule.
The wars destroyed the economies of European countries. At the end of WW 1, the Europeans turned to Africa to exploit its mineral and agricultural wealth. (Even today some European countries cannot sustain their economies without their former empires) Europe’s growing interest in Africa’s minerals led to her expansion into the interior.
The mining of mineral wealth from Africa required the reorganisation of colonial rule, which meant that the autonomy chiefs and kings in Africa would be increasingly dissolved to make room for a more direct form of government.
The colonial situation: Expropriation of land from Africans to European settlers
The need for agricultural wealth required expropriation of land from African people and giving it to the growing number of Europeans in the colonies. Kenya and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) are examples of the expropriation of land.
The introduction of taxes like the hut tax and poll tax forced Africans to work for European settlers as the new taxes had to be paid in cash and not as cattle or crops as was the practice before. Exploitation of African laborers by European employers added to the growing resentment among the local people.
Colonial governments developed new methods of agriculture aimed at increasing revenues collected from African farmers. This also required a shift from subsistence crops to cash crops like coffee, cotton and tea.
People were now forced to sell their cash crops through Coffee, Cotton, or Tea marketing boards to colonial markets at low prices, then colonial merchants would in turn sell these crops to an international market at a much higher price. In this way, the Colonies made a lot of profit for the colonisers. As a result, people began to demand an end to colonial rule.
Resistance movements began to rise in Africa. With the growing number of settlers in some colonies, the demand for more land and labor increased tensions between colonial authorities and the white communities that had settled in the colonies.
More land was taken from African people and given to Europeans for settlement. In response to these developments, some chiefs organised rebellions against colonial authorities.
Development of political parties
Another response to colonial transformation was the formation of political parties. These were formed by the small educated group of Africans mainly residing in developing colonial towns. These Africans were educated at missionary schools.
At first, these parties did not seek to create a mass following, but to lobby their respective colonial governments to recognise the civil rights of Africans and protect and recognise the land rights of Africans in rural areas. In Buganda (part of Uganda), the Government of Buganda had a strong lobby and was in constant touch with the colonial office in London about land issues.
Second World War
In this colonial situation, European powers could no longer hold to their empires because they were exhausted and impoverished by the time war ended. France had been humiliated by Germany.
Suddenly, the myth of European invincibility was demythologised. When India became independent from the British in 1947, it set a precedent in challenging British rule and thus inspired many African nationalists.
Soldiers who joined the Seventh battalion of the King’s African Rifles (KAR) (Abaseveni) were posted to India and Burma and were inspired by the Indian and Burmese soldiers, who were compatriots.