between Britain (German East Africa, renamed
Tanganyika), South Africa (German South-West
Africa, later Namibia), France (most of Togo and
the Cameroons) and Belgium (Ruanda and Uru-
ndi, formerly part of German East Africa, and later
the independent countries of Rwanda and Bur-
undi). But these territories were not supposed to
be regarded simply as colonies; they were placed
under the guardianship of the League of Nations
and ‘mandated’ to Britain, South Africa, France
and Belgium, who were to act as ‘trustees’ for the
advancement of their inhabitants. Their special
status did not, however, help them to advance to
independence sooner. Indeed, one of the man-
dated territories, Namibia, was among the last to
gain independence in 1989.
A small number of Europeans controlled
Africa. They could only do so by leaving to
Africans – under European supervision, adminis-
tration and command – the task of managing their
fellow Africans. This was the model of ‘indirect
rule’. As the first task was pacification, European
officers and black soldiers played a large role in
Africa. Later, Africans filled the lower administra-
tive positions in all the colonies; there were simply
not enough Europeans for the task. In the British
Gold Coast colony for example, less than 850
European officials in the 1930s filled the senior
administrative, military, police and technical posts
in a country of 4 million African inhabitants. This
meant that Africans had to be educated to fill
clerkships and lower supervisory roles. Schools
were established, but even so in the 1930s less
than two out of a hundred Africans received for-
mal education and very few had the opportunity of
university training. Yet the Gold Coast was more
advanced in African education than the rest of
Africa. The situation improved in the 1950s, but
primary and even more so secondary education
was open to only a small minority of Africans.
The lack of African technical and professional
training before independence undermined any
chance of fast development afterwards and created
a small group of African politicians and soldiers in
whose hands real power lay. This was not the kind
of society where democracy could strike roots.
The neglect by the colonisers of the Africans was
the consequence of a policy that was economically
exploitive and which provided government on the
cheap for the European colonial powers. Though
they recognised African needs after the Second
World War, European governments were slow to
effect fundamental improvements in the decade or
two before independence. In any case there would
have been more catching up to accomplish than
there was time for. Their ideas about the future of
their colonies also differed.The French had established a hierarchical, highly
centralised and authoritarian form of administra-
tion with African chiefs acting as executives,
overseen by provincial commissioners and a
governor-general who, in turn, was responsible to
the Colonial Ministry in Paris. The French fol-
lowed the doctrine that black Africans could be
elevated to equality with white French citizens
through education and acceptance of French civil-
isation, French beliefs and French attitudes. In
short, their ultimate aspiration was to become
indistinguishable from the French except by the
colour of their skin. They then acquired all the
rights and obligations of French citizens, includ-
ing being able to vote and to hold ministerial
office. On the face of it this was an enlightened
ideology, but it had nothing to do with guiding
African colonies to their own independence. The
capital of French Africa was Paris. The number of
Africans who qualified for equal rights was kept
very small and the idea was that they would be
grateful enough to defend the virtue of a system
so beneficial for them as to distinguish them from
the poor African masses. The objective then was
‘assimilation’ not ‘independence’. When at the
famous Brazzaville Conference of French African
governors in January 1944 the ‘Free French’ dis-
cussed the future of French colonial Africa, there
were proposals for economic reforms, but not for
independence. De Gaulle afterwards spoke of a
future in which each of the peoples would develop
and administer themselves and later even govern
themselves – ‘later’ meant ‘much later’. There was
talk of some form of association and federation
with France; it was all very vague, and no African
was invited to attend.
The impact of the Second World War and the
emergence of an educated and well-to-do African