Nationalism in Africa

The topic of African nationalism has been repeatedly contested and redefined over the past century. At the end of the nineteenth century, the European powers divided the continent and ruled virtually all of Africa, and African nations lost their sovereignty. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Africans began to seriously resist colonial rule, Africa underwent a major transformation and each colony eventually gained its freedom. Africans, in general, united in hopes of regaining their sovereignty. Nationalism originally referred to the process of uniting and regaining freedom from European rule, but it was also defined by pioneer African leaders to mean the creation of new nations as well as their economic and political transformation.