West Africa

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Please check back later for the full article.

The study of France’s relations with its former colonies in West Africa, from the colonial period to the end of the millennium and beyond, has traditionally been dominated by two approaches. The first of these has been to treat decolonization in French West Africa as a planned and reasonably smooth process, successfully managed by France’s governing elites and African political leaders who wished to maintain links with France. The second, focusing on the post-colonial period, has been characterized by a narrative of French manipulation and neocolonialism. Thanks to Jean-François Verschave, the term Françafrique has been popularized to describe the connections between African presidents, French officials and their friends from multinational companies, and the deployment of troops and advisers, which have characterized France’s relations with its former colonies in Africa in the post-independence period. These approaches give pride of place to the role of individuals in the decolonization process. Although their importance cannot be denied, the focus of this article is to show that French decolonization in West Africa was, in fact, a highly constrained process that cannot be understood in isolation from wider decolonization processes unfolding across the globe, notably but not exclusively, in other parts of the French colonial empire. Shaped by the particular history of French colonization in West Africa, the new international context after the Second World War that was dominated by the two new superpowers, the United States and the USSR, and the perceived need to maintain empire at all costs to restore French grandeur on the world stage; it was a process in which a multiplicity of French and African actors were involved who often had limited room for maneuver.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Please check back later for the full article.

Motion picture technology was developed at the dawn of the 20th century, just as the colonization of Africa was launched at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The colonial administrations in West Africa used film as a means for conveying colonial culture to African subjects. For the British and French colonials, film was a means to control public opinion. Both British and French colonial administrations criminalized indigenous filmmaking for fear of the subversive potential of anti-colonial messages. When West African nations became independent in the late 20th century, these restrictions vanished, and Africans began to make films. This process played out differently in Francophone Africa than in Anglophone countries. France cultivated African filmmakers, sponsored training, and funded film projects. Talented and determined filmmakers in Anglophone Africa also struggled to produce celluloid films, but unlike their counterparts in former French colonies, they received little support from abroad. A significant number of excellent celluloid films were produced under this system, but largely in Francophone Africa. Though many of these filmmakers have gained global recognition, most remain virtually unknown in Africa outside the elite spaces of the FESPACO film festival and limited screenings at French embassies. Though West African filmmakers have produced an impressive body of high quality work, few on the continent know of Africa’s most famous films. This paradox of a continent with renowned filmmakers but no local film culture began to change in the 1990s, when aspiring artists in Nigeria and Ghana began to make inexpensive movies using video technology. Early works were edited on VCRs, but as digital video technology advanced, this process of informal video production quickly spread to other regions. The West African video movie industry has grown to become one of the most prominent, diverse, and dynamic expressions of a pan-African popular culture in Africa and throughout the diaspora.

West African manuscripts are numerous and varied in forms and contents. There are thousands of them across West Africa. A significant portion of them are documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written in Arabic script). They deal with both religious and nonreligious subjects. The development of these manuscript traditions dates back to the early days of Islam in West Africa, in the 11th century. In addition to these Arabic and Ajami manuscripts, there have been others written in indigenous scripts. These include those in the Vai script invented in Liberia; Tifinagh, the traditional writing system of the Amazigh (Berber) people; and the N’KO script invented in Guinea for Mande languages. While the writings in indigenous scripts are rare less numerous and widespread, they nonetheless constitute an important component of West Africa’s written heritage. Though the efforts devoted to the preservation of West African manuscripts are limited compared to other world regions, interest in preserving them has increased. Some of the initial preservation efforts of West African manuscripts are the collections of colonial officers. Academics later supplemented these collections. These efforts resulted in important print and digital repositories of West African manuscripts in Africa, Europe, and America. Until recently, most of the cataloguing and digital preservation efforts of West African manuscripts have focused on those written in Arabic. However, there has been an increasing interest in West African manuscripts written in Ajami and indigenous scripts. Important West African manuscripts in Arabic, Ajami, and indigenous scripts have now been digitized and preserved, though the bulk remain uncatalogued and unknown beyond the communities of their owners.