The Year of Africa: seventeen nations gain independence

Date

1960 (the 'Year of Africa')

Category

Politics & governance

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa (continent-wide)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

During 1960, often called the 'Year of Africa', seventeen African colonies achieved independence, marking the most concentrated wave of decolonisation on the continent.

Fourteen of the new states emerged from the French colonial empire, including Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Madagascar and others; two came from the British Empire (Nigeria and Somalia, the latter formed by uniting British Somaliland with the Italian-administered trust territory); and the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. The number of independent African states rose sharply, and the influx of new members transformed the United Nations, where African and Asian states increasingly shaped debates on self-determination. The year demonstrated the collapse of European colonial authority across Africa, though independence often came with fragile institutions and contested borders inherited from colonial rule. The Congo descended almost immediately into the Congo Crisis, illustrating the instability that could follow rapid decolonisation.

Empires active in 1960 (the 'Year of Africa')

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE to 1991 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE to 1962 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE to 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE to 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE to 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE to 1974 CE

Related politics & governance events

• Construction of the Berlin Wall
  13 August 1961
• Founding of the People's Republic of China
  1 October 1949
• Establishment of Apartheid in South Africa
  1948
• Independence and Partition of British India
  14 to 15 August 1947
• Iranian Revolution
  January to February 1979
• Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika
  1985 to 1991 (from 11 March 1985)

Essential reading

• Containerisation begins: SS Ideal X first container voyage
  26 April 1956
• Castle Bravo Test and the Nuclearisation of the Pacific
  1 March 1954
• Apollo 11 Moon landing
  20 July 1969 (mission 16 to 24 July 1969)
• Soweto Uprising Galvanises Anti-Apartheid Struggle
  1976

Further reading

The Ethiopians: A History

The wider story

The Ethiopians: A History

Richard Pankhurst

Standard general history of Ethiopia and its dynasties.

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