Talk:Decolonisation of Africa

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I'm not done with this article, I'll wikify it and copyedit progressively. It'll be done in three weeks. So it doesn't need to be in the community portal. We already have enough articles there that noone works on. Vincent Gray 02:59, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's been almost a year since the above note was written, and it appears as though this article was never finished. There are long paragraphs that need to be wikified and broken up into smaller sections. Furthermore, I don't think a lengthy discussion on the decolonization of Latin America has much place in the page for the decolonization of Africa. Is User:Vincent Gray who apears to now be User:Gicheru still planning on working on this, or has it been forgotten? I see a couple people have contributed recently; are you taking care of the article at large? --Romarin 23:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I dont understand, how can you differ so much from the subject on wikipedia? There are long paragraphs about Latin America solely on a article about Africa. Can someone fix this article, it has not helped me much for my essay with a deadline tomorrow, maybe if it is fixed preceding persons might be saved the pain derived from reading this confucing article. --Pharod 20 April 2006

There's nothing on Algeria/France, and the article doesn't talk about any war.

I've taken out most of the Latin American stuff. It looks like this article was cribbed verbatim from a piece originally intended to compare decolonization in the two continents. What is left doesn't tell what happened, it describes the before and after and repeats itself quite a bit. Much more improvements needed. Tyronen 22:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Namibia

Why is the independence of Namibia considered the end of decolonization? Namibia was part of South Africa, which was already an independent African nation. Perhaps the author believes that South Africa wasn't really African since it had a government dominated by Europeans. Nonetheless Namibia certainly wasn't a colony. Isomorphic 04:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It was a colony of South AfricaRaveenS

It was a League of Nations mandate, so yeah, effectively a colony. WilyD 21:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute

From the article: "As a result of colonialism and imperialism, Africa suffered long term effects, such as the loss of important natural resources like gold and rubber, economic devastation, cultural confusion, geopolitical division, and political subjugation."

While it is a common belief that Western colonization of Africa was harmful, it is by no means an undisputed position, nor is it the most widely-held. In Dissent on Development, for example, developmental economist P.T. Bauer offered a whole volume solid and thoroughly evidenced arguments against this view.

The "loss of natural resources" argument is completely bogus; to this day, the African continent is rich with untapped natural resources.

The concepts in the article contradict themselves; from the start, the article implies that the process of colonization was bad for Africa. It then goes on to argue that the period of decolonization was also bad. Both of these cannot be true at the same time; decolonization resulted in economic hardship precisely because things were better under Western management. The areas of Africa that had the greatest amount of contact with the West had the highest and most modern standards of living due to the capital, technology, and skills that Westerners brought.

To the point, the writer of this article is poorly informed with an obvious bias against the West. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.71.136.99 (talk) 20:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC).

Sounds like would rather see the article without bias towards the West? You can't have it both ways. You can quantify things being better monetarily under the management of the West... MONETARILY. Having Africa was therefore forced to compensate for this shortage and greatly benefited from this change. is completely against Wikipedia's NPOV policy. The colonizers may have benefitted from the marketing boards and from forcing Africans to grow cash crops, but Africans in their entirety did not benefit from being exploited, sorry.

Last Statement

the way that this article states that the colonies Got independence during 1930 contradicts its own statement that the decolonization started during the end of WWII.68.4.42.99 15:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The article should be moved from Decolonization of Africa back to Decolonisation of Africa due to strong national ties to the topic, as per the Manual of Style. An article on a topic that has strong ties to particular English-speaking nations should use the appropriate variety of English for those nations. Spelling in the article should therefore reflect the AU/Commonwealth/EU/UK spelling conventions most commonly used in Africa and Europe. 89.240.197.164 (talk) 17:09, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. This is not what the Manual of Style says nor intends, nor is it a correct statement of English usage; not only is the OED's first citation decolonization, that is their spelling of the word. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Just a correction to the above remark. Actually Oxford spelling is only used by Oxford University publications and The Times Literary Supplement. The -ize form doesn't reflect common usage outside North America, so the objection that the suggestion isn't consistent with the Manual of Style isn't correct. The -ise spelling is the norm in Commonwealth English, which is the form of English overwhelmingly used by English speakers in Europe and Africa, so it's not a materially valid objection. 129.67.174.46 (talk) 11:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)