The Burma Campaign from an African Perspective: The 1944 World War II Travelogue of Sgt. F. S. Arkhurst of the Royal West African Frontier Forces

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Kwame Osei-Poku
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West African ◽  
World War ◽  
African Perspective

African American Journalists in World War II West Africa: The NNPA Commission Tour of 1944–1945

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110549
Author(s):  
Oliver Coates
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
American West ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic

The National Negro Publishers Association (NNPA) Commission to West Africa in 1944–1945 represents a major episode in the history of World War II Africa, as well as in American–West Africa relations. Three African American reporters toured the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia, and the Congo between November 1944 and February 1945, before returning to Washington, DC to report to President Roosevelt. They documented their tour in the pages of the Baltimore Afro-American, the Chicago Defender, and the Norfolk Journal and Guide. Their Americans’ visit had a significant impact in wartime West Africa and was widely documented in the African press. This article examines the NNPA tour geographically, before analyzing American reporters’ interactions with West Africans, and assessing African responses to the tour. Drawing on both African American and West African newspapers, it situates the NNPA tour within the history of World War II West Africa, and in terms of African print culture. It argues that the NNPA tour became the focus of West African hopes for future political, economic, and intellectual relations with African Americans, while revealing how the NNPA reporters engaged African audiences during their tour.

The Economic Community of West African States and International Law

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunday Babalola Ajulo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
Cape Verde ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
World War ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Heads Of State

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established by the Treaty signed in Lagos on 25 May 1975 by the Heads of State and Government (or their representatives) from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. They were joined a few months later by Cape Verde, thereby increasing the number of member-states to 16. Following the post-World War II convention whereby international organisations formally insert in their constitutive instruments a declaratory statement concerning their status, it is not surprising that Article 60(1) stipulated that the Community ‘shall enjoy legal personality’. Although such organisations may be similar they are never identical, and this is why the nature and scope of the legal personality of each needs to be ascertained and discussed.

Measuring the War Experience: Ghanaian Soldiers in World War II

1987 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne M. Israel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West African ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Impact

During World War II, some 65,000 Ghanaians were under the command of British officers in the Royal West African Frontier Force, and since India was the transit and refuelling station for those en route to Burma, the 30,000 who served there briefly experienced life in both countries. There has been much conjecture about the impact of the war on participating African soldiers,1 and this article focuses on the nature and socio-economic implications of their experience as later revealed by the veterans themselves in two rather overlooked sources of information: oral interviews and locally published materials.

Navigating the Fourth Republic

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-99
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
West African ◽  
World War ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
African Students ◽  
Fourth Republic ◽  
African Populations ◽  
African Student

Through the end of the Third Republic, only tiny numbers of West African students managed to study at France’s universities. Barriers to higher education began to fall after World War II, especially after African populations collectively gained citizenship. Higher education became a high-stakes policy area, as French officials and West African students and politicians vied to influence the parameters and possibilities of the postwar order. Amid escalating concerns about West African student migrations to the metropole, French officials eventually opened an Institute of Higher Studies in Dakar. However, this inchoate institution ended up highlighting the fundamental ambiguities of overseas citizenship. As West African students turned increasingly to anti-colonial activism, French authorities finally committed to establishing a full university in Dakar. Paradoxically, the construction and consolidation of this French university took place during the period of active decolonization.

Disability and Work in British West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Grischow
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Control Program ◽  
West African ◽  
World War ◽  
Ability To Work ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Disabled Veterans ◽  
The Social ◽  
Onchocerciasis Control

World War II significantly affected the development of disability programs in British West Africa during the late colonial period. Beginning in the early 1940s, Britain’s Colonial Office worked with the West African governors to develop rehabilitation programs for disabled African veterans. In Britain, rehabilitation for disabled veterans took the form of social orthopedics, which equated citizenship with the ability to work; British programs therefore prioritized reintegration into the workforce as the main goal of rehabilitation. The colonial programs attempted to transfer the social orthopedics program to Africa. The project failed because the African veterans did not want to be remade into productive workers on the Western/capitalist model. However, it did produce two lasting legacies: the creation of a network of Disabled People’s Organizations during the 1950s and 1960s, and the development of a successful onchocerciasis control program between 1974 and 2002.

Military-Inspired Anti-Bureaucratic Corruption Campaigns: an Appraisal of Niger's Experience

1986 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kunle Amuwo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
West African ◽  
The Political ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
World War ◽  
Local Section ◽  
Bureaucratic Corruption ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
French Speaking

The French colony of Niger gained republican status on 18 December 1958 and political independence on 3 August 1960. This vast country, twice the size of its ex-metropole, and which figures amongst the 25 least-developed countries in the world, was under the political direction of the Parti progressiste nigérien for over 15 years. The P.P.N. had come to power in September 1958, after capturing 78 per cent of the votes cast in favour of continued membership of the now defunct French Community, and was headed by Hamani Diori, the leader of the local section of the Rassemblement démocratique africain, the more or less common platform for French-speaking West African politicians after World War II. However, President Diori formed his first cabinet only after the independence constitution had been promulgated on 8 November 1960.

The Archival System of Former French West Africa

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (01) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
G. Wesley Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Current Status ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Parent Organization ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

In September and October of 1964, I visited the various centers once forming links in the archival system of French West Africa. Contrary to what occurred in Equatorial Africa, the French left these archival holdings in place, except for current material which was shipped to the rue Oudinot (Ministry of Colonies) in Paris. The center of the West African system was the Archives of the Government-General in Dakar (later the High Commission). Based originally on the Senegalese holdings, this archive became an independent agency of the federal government and was the parent organization of subsidiary archives for Senegal, Mauritania, Soudan, Upper Volta, Niger, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. It was parallel in structure to the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), which also had its headquarters in Dakar and maintained subsidiary centers for each territory. In some cases, the archives and IFAN centers were amalgamated (during World War II) and the history of the two organizations is often inseparable. This survey is an attempt to describe the establishment and development of these archival centers, how their material was organized and can be used for research, and their current status in the independent countries.

“Bilali of Faransekila”: A West African Hunter and World War I Hero According to a World War II Veteran and Hunters' Singer of Mali

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 41-70
Author(s):  
David C. Conrad
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Oral History ◽  
First World War ◽  
West African ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
World War Ii Veteran ◽  
First World

“An only son must never die in war until the end of the world.”(Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila,” 1:396)Discussing the significance of Kande Kamara's oral history of West African experiences in the First World War, Joe Harris Lunn observes that, although historians have begun to examine the effects of that war on west Africa, their studies are mostly based on written sources, “and therefore shed little light on the lived reality of the war for the African masses whose perceptions of their experiences were never recorded.” Of particular value then, is the oral history provided by the Guinean veteran Kande Kamara, offering as it does an opportunity for assessing the European war's impact on west Africans. Lunn finds, however, that west African soldiers who served in France during the First World War have left very few records of either their wartime experiences or its effects on their later lives. The text by the late Malian hunters' singer Seydou Camara that is presented here helps to redress this lamentable deficiency because, although it is a step or two removed from the sort of firsthand eyewitness account offered by Kande Kamara, it provides valuable support for and confirmation of certain elements of Kande Kamara's testimony. Composed and sung by Seydou Camara, “Bilali of Faransekila” provides us with an oral traditional counterpart to Kande Kamara's firsthand account.

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