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The struggle for independence

“Vade Retro domum” - “Nolo Relinquere”

Spanish Colonies

" Spain concluded in 1968 that the best way to preserve its interests in equatorial Africa
was to grant independence to its people without preparing them for it."

"Western Africa - The Formation of African Independence Movements." 103
Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Belgian Congo (Zairean and then DRC)

“ Independence for Congo followed a strange course of events unlike anything else in the
rest of Africa. The Belgian Congo was huge and underdeveloped. After the war, new

cultural organisations like ABAKO, Association des Bakongo and the Lulua-Freres,
emerged in the 1950s.

But it was the attitude of the Belgians which bred a new political consciousness in the

1950s. In the first place, the Belgians, like the Portuguese, were resolutely untouched by
the drive towards independence in the early 1950s. De-colonisation was first discussed

in 1956, but seen as something that would happen thirty years into the future. “

"The Story of Africa" 104
BBC World Service
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The Emergence of African Leaders

“ By the later 1940s, however, there were appreciable numbers of Africans in both the
French and the British colonies who had emerged from traditional society through the
new opportunities for economic advancement and education.

***
British educational system therefore developed into a pyramid with a much broader base

than the French one. By the mid-1950s, there were more than two million schoolchildren
in Nigeria, about 6 percent of the total population and a much higher proportion of the
population of the south, in which the schools were concentrated; in the Gold Coast there

were nearly 600,000, some 12 percent of the population. Many more people in the British
than in the French territories thus got some education, and appreciably more were able

to attend universities. In 1948 universities were established in the Gold Coast and
Nigeria; by 1960, the former territory had about 4,500 university graduates and the latter
more than 5,000. The first French African university was a federal institution at Dakar