ABSTRACT
Perhaps no other continent than Africa has seen greater political change during the past half-century. When Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952, only Liberia, Ethiopia, Libya and Egypt were ruled by people of Arab or African origin. By the end of the twentieth century, the whole of the continent had come under indigenous rule: indeed, even before the end of the 1950s, much of the Maghreb, Ghana and the Sudan had achieved statehood. These were followed early in the 1960s by the remaining British and French colonies in West and East Africa and by the vast territory of the Congo, the colonial preserve of Belgium. Only Portugal chose to defy the ‘wind of change’ which was by then blowing through the continent.
