The Quasi-universal Adoption of the Presidential Republic Mode in Africa after the End of Colonialism

Abstract

Except for a very small number of countries (several of which had remained monarchies), the largest part of Africa had been colonised, both before the nineteenth century (mainly by Portugal and to an extent by Spain) and since then by France, Belgium, Britain, as well as up to World War I by Germany and up to World War II by Italy. By the 1980s, all these colonies had disappeared, a few before 1960, but mainly during the 1960s and 1970s; Portugal was the last country to give independence to its colonies and it conducted major wars in all of them until, after its regime became liberal-democratic in the mid-1970s, independence was declared. The African independence process was therefore as general as the independence process in Spanish America 150 years earlier: it was also as protracted, at least from the beginning to the end, although most of the decolonisation process in Africa occurred within a few years, between 1956 and 1963. There were also sharp differences between the way decolonisation had occurred in Central and South America and the way in occurred in Africa. That process was not unified, as a number of ‘mother countries’ were involved; partly as a result, it took place differently, not just in timing, but even more, in theory at least, in terms of the process and the philosophy on which it was based according to the colonial country which was giving independence.