Mali Federation dissolves as Mali and Senegal separate

Black residents gathered at Sharpeville in a Pan Africanist Congress campaign against pass laws that controlled African movement and labor. Police opened fire, killing 69 people and wounding many...

The Republic of the Congo became independent from Belgium. At the ceremony, King Baudouin praised Belgian rule; Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba replied that independence had been won through struggle...

The former Italian-administered Trust Territory and British Somaliland joined to form the Somali Republic after separate paths to independence. The union answered a popular pan-Somali project but left...

Five days after independence, Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique mutinied against a Belgian-led command that had not been Africanized. Belgian officers’ insulting insistence that independence...

Moïse Tshombe declared mineral-rich Katanga’s secession shortly after Congo’s independence. Belgium supported the breakaway province and maintained close ties to its mining interests. The secession...

Nigeria became independent within the Commonwealth after a long constitutional transition and anticolonial organizing across a large, diverse federation. Nigerian political leaders inherited a state...

General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) declared that all peoples have the right to self-determination and called for colonialism to end. Many newly independent Asian and African states helped shape and...

Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo, and Joseph Okito were killed in Katanga after being transferred there by Congolese authorities. A UN investigation and later Belgian parliamentary inquiry documented...

Leaders and representatives from 25 countries met in Belgrade to coordinate a foreign policy outside the Cold War blocs. The conference built on Asian-African solidarity and Bandung, while...

Tanganyika became independent, with Julius Nyerere as prime minister. The transition followed mass mobilization through the Tanganyika African National Union and a comparatively negotiated end to...