New Africa

From the 1950s, most African countries gained independence from colonial rule. They developed their own systems of government and built up new economies. However, famine, poverty and civil wars have caused major hardships.

The borders of many countries in the new Africa were the same as those that had been fixed by the European colonizers in the late 1800s. These borders often ignored traditional tribal groupings, and independence was sometimes followed by civil war as peoples within one country tried to set up new states of their own. This happened in the Congo (formely Belgian) and in Nigeria (formerly Britisg-ruled), where a breakaway state named itself Biafra. In Ethiopia, which had never been a colony, a revolution overthrew the king, Haile Selassie. In Angola, nationalists fought against the Portuguese, who were reluctant to give up control of their colony. In the nations of Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa, there was fighting between rival ethnic groups, each wanting control of the country.

FAMINE

African nations frequently suffer famine on a massive scale when drought hits areas with poor soil and the crops fail. People caught in the disaster have to rely on aid or face starvation and disease.

In Uganda, a brutal director, Idi Amin, expelled Ugandan Asians in the 1970s. problems also occurred in countries where white settlers wanted to stay in control, as in Algeria, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, from 1948 to 1990, the whites-only government used a system known as apartheid was abolished, free elections were held and, in 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.