In two pieces to mark the 60th anniversary of independence for many African states in 2010, we look back and forward at 100 years of Africa. Read two extracts here. 

First, Kenyan writer Parselelo Kantai argues that fifty years after the end of colonial rule, Africa’s liberation leaders have much to account for, but they are not solely responsible for the state of the continent. 

In the twilight of colonial rule, Accra, capital of newly-independent Ghana, was a crucible of continental anti-colonialist politics. Ghana’s independence in March 1957, the first in anglophone Africa, inspired nationalists around the continent. When in December 1958, Kwame Nkrumah’s government organised the All Africa People’s Conference, it brought Africa’s 
nationalist movements together for the first time. 


Delegates from nationalist parties in 28 African countries came to Accra. Dominating the room was a banner in the shape of Africa reading: “HANDS OFF AFRICA! AFRICA MUST BE FREE!” The delegates immersed themselves in liberation politics, debated the merits of political violence, how to overthrow apartheid in South Africa, and above all how to develop a “United States of Africa”.


Accra was a defining moment for African nationalism. Many delegates went on to lead their countries to freedom, and beyond – Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmed Ben Bella, Kenneth Kaunda, Kamuzu Banda and others. They would dominate Africa’s political landscape for a generation. Their personal strengths and weaknesses would help shape much of independent Africa.


Events moved quickly after Accra. In the next three years, France would lose the war in Algeria and cede independence to most of its colonies in West and Central Africa. Paris modified its old colonial currency zone: the CFA in Colonies Françaises d’Afrique would now stand for Communauté 
Financière d’Afrique, a symbolic shift which has worked to France’s commercial advantage until today, with Paris underwriting the currencies of 14 African states.


With leaders such as Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Léopold Senghor serving as French ministers and legislators, Paris 
engineered a much closer integration of African politicians into its metropolitan system than other colonial powers wanted or attempted. In time, that integration degenerated into the mutually-corrupting relations of Françafrique paraded through the courtrooms of Paris in recent months.


North African states, with the exception of Algeria, 
negotiated independence deals in the 1950s and had sharply differing perspectives on relations with the rest of Africa: Algeria’s Ben Bella and Egypt’s Abdul Nasser encouraged the militancy of Pan-Africanism while Morocco and Tunisia took more conservative lines.


Belgium, surprised in 1960 by the riots in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville) that showed African fury with years of colonial depredations, was bounced into ceding independence to Congo and then tried to undermine it by encouraging mineral-rich Katanga to secede.


Britain, which had granted home rule to Ghana and 
Nigeria in 1951, came under growing pressure from African nationalists, its own Labour Party and the US government to speed up decolonisation. Disclosure of atrocities in Kenya at the end of the Mau Mau war reinforced the pressure. 


Addressing South Africa’s whites-only parliament in 
February 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan showed he got the message: “The most striking of all the 
impressions I have formed…is of the strength of this 
African national consciousness. The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact...and our national policies must take account of it.”


This speech set the stage for Britain’s rituals of decolonisation: constitutional negotiations at Lancaster House and an industry of flag, anthem, currency and coat-of-arms production for the new nations. But it was clear the nationalist leaders were inheriting a set of contradictions. 


“When nationalism is framed by fighting an outsider, your enemy is clearly identifiable,” explains Nigerian 
historian Toyin Falola. “Pan-Africanism had been a reaction of resistance. Anti-colonialism was a reaction against domination. Now there was no enemy and the question was whether these ideals of resistance could build a nation.”


Fifty years on, what is the nationalist legacy? Many 
Africans from Lagos to Nairobi and Johannesburg see poor leadership as the biggest problem in their countries. The wave of reforms has produced political parties that are mainly ethnic 
vehicles. Corruption within the political class looks entrenched...

Looking forward, editor-in-chief Patrick Smith gazes into Africa's future in 2060. It's one of bouncing babies, big cities, resources battles, democratic delays and climate change. This extract looks at demography and ubanisation over the next 50 years. 

Three important trends offer a vital guide to 
Africa’s future over the next 50 years: the rates of mortality, birth and urbanisation. All three indicate that Africa is in the midst of a demographic transition of the kind that has already transformed economies and societies in Latin America and Asia.


The central question for Africa is whether it can use the economic advantages of a surge in working-age population as a platform for the modernisation and diversification of its economies. Known as the ‘demographic dividend’, the phenomenon is reckoned by some analysts to have boosted China’s growth rates by a third. India is now halfway through the same sort of transition with its cities and factories braced for a decade of booming growth.


Like a series of railway wagons shunting along a track, mortality rates decline, then birth rates fall, leading to a bulge of young people. Many of these people move from the countryside into towns in search of work in factories and the service sector. That increases production and demand and then prosperity all round, as it did in China and is now doing in India.


The migration from China’s rural hinterland to its coastal cities has been one of the greatest movements of people in history; it has also helped lift 400m people out of poverty. Africans are making the same sort of journeys, and Africa is already the fastest-urbanising continent.


The demographic transition in Africa started some 60 years ago as death rates began to fall markedly while birth rates remained stable. That meant a population boom which peaked in the 1980s, with the population of most countries growing by more than 3% per year.


Since then, fertility rates have gradually fallen. In the 1950s, a woman in Mozambique would have on average six children in her lifetime, now it is five. In countries such as Botswana and Côte d’Ivoire, fertility rates have almost halved but are still high by world standards. 
Women in East Asia, for example, now have on average 1.6 children.


This year, Africa’s population reached one billion people, according to the UN Population Fund. It forecasts that there will be more than 2bn Africans by 2050, outstripping India’s projected population of 1.6bn and China’s 1.4 bn.
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Read the full article, plus an opinion piece from Graça Machel on why women are one of Africa's greatest assets  in the December-January 'Africa in 2010' edition of The Africa Report, on sale now. See a preview of this article below or subscribe to The Africa Report via our online store.