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The decolonisation of Africa is a process that largely took place from the mid-1950s to 1975 during the Cold War, with radical government changes on the continent as colonial governments made the transition to independent states. The process was often marred with violence, political turmoil, widespread unrest, and organised revolts in both northern and sub-Saharan countries including the Mau Mau rebellion in British Kenya, the Algerian War in French Algeria, the Congo Crisis in the Belgian Congo, the Angolan War of Independence in Portuguese Angola, the Zanzibar Revolution in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, and the Nigerian Civil War in the secessionist state of Biafra.
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- The process by which Africa produced thirty-odd sovereign states was an extremely complex one, characterized by an interplay of forces and calculations on the part of various groups of Africans, on the part of the colonial powers, and on the part of interest groups inside the metropolis. [...] It must be stressed that the move for the regaining of independence was initiated by the African people; and, to whatever extent that objective was realized, the motor force of the people must be taken into account.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. 1972. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-9501546-4-0.
- The United States, under President Kennedy, welcomed and supported the growth of free and independent nations in Africa, and American policy will continue along the same lines. Our ultimate goal is a world dedicated to peace and freedom. To help achieve such a world, we will continue to combat those age-old enemies of world peace--illiteracy, illness, malnutrition, and poverty. We also are deeply committed to the attainment of basic human rights by all men. And we are irrevocably determined to speed that process by assuring equal rights to all Americans as quickly as we are able. In essence, then, the United States is devoted to the same basic human aspirations as those of the people of Kenya--and, indeed, as those of people of good will throughout the world.
- Lyndon B. Johnson; Message to Prime Minister Kenyatta on the Occasion of the Independence of Kenya Online, The American Presidency Project; 23 December 1963
- The American Negro saw, in the land from which he had been snatched and thrown into slavery, a great pageant of political progress. He realized that just thirty years ago there were only three independent nations in the whole of Africa. He knew that by 1963 more than thirty-four African nations had risen from colonial bondage. The Negro saw black statesmen voting on vital issues in the United Nations—and knew that in many cities of his own land he was not permitted to take that significant walk to the ballot box. He saw black kings and potentates ruling from palaces—and knew he had been condemned to move from small ghettos to larger ones. Witnessing the drama of Negro progress elsewhere in the world, witnessing a level of conspicuous consumption at home exceeding anything in our history, it was natural that by 1963 Negroes would rise with resolution and demand a share of governing power, and living conditions measured by American standards rather than by the standards of colonial impoverishment.
- Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait (1963), pp. 10-11
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