Somali Republic unites two territories after separate colonial exits

In a referendum on Charles de Gaulle’s proposed French Community, Guinean voters overwhelmingly rejected continued association with France. Sékou Touré’s campaign made the vote a direct choice for...

Delegates from independent states and liberation movements met in Accra at the All-African Peoples’ Conference. The gathering linked struggles against colonial rule and racial domination and...

Rebel forces led by Fidel Castro entered Havana after the collapse of Fulgencio Batista’s government. The revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and sought greater control over land,...

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...

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...

The Mali Federation, formed by Senegal and the Sudanese Republic, broke apart after only weeks of independence. Senegal withdrew amid a political crisis; the Sudanese Republic then proclaimed the...

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...