ABSTRACT
The colonial legacy and the nature of the post-colonial African state led to many rebellions and civil wars in the continent after 1960. Since the new African countries inherited colonial borders that had been imposed without consideration of physical or human geography, regional armed separatist movements emerged in, for example, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia. Colonial favoritism of a particular region or ethnic group within a larger territory led to violent shifts in power relations as in Uganda and Rwanda. These late twentieth-century African conflicts were often also Cold War proxy wars as the superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, supported rival combatants. A tradition of tit-for-tat support of rebel groups developed in post-colonial Africa in which neighboring states sponsored rebels in each other’s territories. The end of the Cold War at the start of the 1990s and the subsequent collapse of superpower-backed authoritarian regimes destabilized parts of Africa and caused more civil wars some of which continued into the twenty-first century. After 1990, armed groups in Africa supported themselves by exporting resources such as diamonds and minerals related to the burgeoning electronics industry, and cut costs by press-ganging child soldiers from among Africa’s youthful population. Although African secessionist groups had been unsuccessful during the Cold War era as international organizations and African states sought to maintain existing borders, the dramatic post-Cold War changes facilitated armed separatism as in Eritrea and eventually South Sudan.
