Decolonization of Africa
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Decolonization of Africa trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In 1945 almost all of Africa was ruled from Europe. Within a single generation, dozens of new states had flags, anthems and seats at the United Nations. Few changes in modern history happened so quickly or reshaped so many lives. This quiz covers the whole story: the nationalist leaders who went from prison cells to presidential palaces, the peaceful handovers and the long guerrilla wars, the speeches and summits that signalled the end of empire, and the breakaway crises that followed independence. Questions range across British, French, Belgian, Portuguese and Italian territories. It suits students revising world history, teachers who need a ready-made review round, and anyone curious about how the modern map of the continent was drawn. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country took its new name from a medieval West African empire when the Gold Coast became independent in 1957?
Ghana
Ghana revived the name Arab traders gave Wagadu, an empire that lay far to the north-west in what is now Mali and Mauritania.
Q 02Which West African republic, settled by freed American slaves, was independent before the Scramble for Africa began?
Liberia
Liberia declared independence in 1847, and only it and Ethiopia were spared when European powers carved up the continent.
Q 03Which 1950s uprising against British rule in Kenya was fought mainly by members of the Kikuyu people?
Mau Mau rebellion
The Mau Mau rebellion was effectively beaten when British forces captured its field marshal, Dedan Kimathi, in October 1956.
Q 04Which first prime minister of independent Congo was dismissed within months and shot by firing squad in January 1961?
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba lasted under three months in office. In 2022 Belgium returned a single gold-capped tooth, all that was left of him, to his family.
Q 05Which Egyptian president nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, prompting an invasion by Britain, France and Israel?
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the takeover in a speech in Alexandria, saying the canal would pay for the Aswan Dam after Western funding was withdrawn.
Q 06What nickname is given to 1960, when seventeen African nations including Nigeria and Senegal gained independence?
Year of Africa
Year of Africa was a phrase UN official Ralph Bunche used that February, predicting a rush of new states; fourteen of the seventeen came out of the French empire.
Q 07Which British prime minister told South Africa's parliament in 1960 that a wind of change was blowing through Africa?
Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan had already given the same address in Accra a month earlier, where it drew little response.
Q 08Which French leader returned to power in 1958 during the Algerian War and later accepted Algeria's independence?
Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle offered Algeria self-determination in 1959, and French voters backed that course in a 1961 referendum.
Q 09Which country dropped the name Rhodesia at independence in 1980 for one taken from a ruined medieval city?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe comes from a Shona term for Great Zimbabwe, the medieval city whose ruins stand in the country's south-east.
Q 10Which country, known as South West Africa under South African rule, finally became independent in 1990?
Namibia
Namibia had been run from Pretoria since a League of Nations mandate in 1920, and its independence day finally came on 21 March 1990.
Q 11Which Gold Coast politician won a 1951 election from his prison cell and went on to lead the colony to independence?
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah was serving a three-year sentence in Accra's Fort James when his party won by a landslide, and the British freed him that same month.
Q 12Which future president of Kenya was imprisoned by the British after the Kapenguria trial of the early 1950s?
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta was tried in a remote town near the Ugandan border, chosen because the authorities hoped it would not attract crowds.
Q 13Which former schoolteacher, nicknamed Mwalimu, led Tanganyika to independence in 1961 and became its first president?
Julius Nyerere
Q 21Which Guinean leader urged a No vote in France's 1958 referendum, winning immediate independence for his country?
Sékou Touré
Sékou Touré declared that Guinea preferred poverty in freedom to riches in slavery, and it was the only French African colony to vote to leave.
Q 22Which poet became Senegal's first president in 1960 and later the first African elected to the Académie française?
Léopold Senghor
Léopold Senghor spent two years in wartime prison camps, passing most of his time writing poems, before he entered French politics.
Q 23Which movement asserting Black identity took its name from a term Aimé Césaire used in a 1930s Paris student magazine?
Négritude
Julius Nyerere kept the nickname, Swahili for teacher, although a headmaster had once vetoed him as head prefect for being too kind.
Q 14Which Swahili word for freedom names the Nairobi gardens where Kenya's flag was first raised in December 1963?
Uhuru
Uhuru Gardens mark the spot where the colonial flag came down at midnight; a fig tree stands at the purported exact place.
Q 15In which city did Emperor Haile Selassie host the 1963 founding of the Organisation of African Unity?
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa was chosen after the emperor invited two rival blocs of states there to settle their dispute, and the body kept its headquarters in the city.
Q 16Which Portuguese colony's independence in 1975 set off a civil war that drew in Cuban and South African troops?
Angola
Angola had been a major exporter of coffee, bananas and sisal, but three decades of fighting left its farmland littered with landmines.
Q 17Which breakaway state's secession in 1967 plunged newly independent Nigeria into a civil war lasting until 1970?
Biafra
Biafra was proclaimed by the military governor Odumegwu Ojukwu in the mainly Igbo south-east, after a wave of anti-Igbo killings in 1966.
Q 18Which mineral-rich province, led by Moïse Tshombe, broke away from the Congo days after Belgian rule ended in 1960?
Katanga
Katanga seceded with the backing of Union Minière, the company mining its copper and uranium, and a large contingent of Belgian military advisers.
Q 19Which 1974 military coup in Lisbon toppled Portugal's dictatorship and soon freed its African colonies?
Carnation Revolution
Carnation Revolution comes from the flowers a restaurant worker, Celeste Caeiro, handed to soldiers; crowds then put them in the muzzles of guns.
Q 20Which UN Secretary-General died in a 1961 plane crash while flying to ceasefire talks during the Congo Crisis?
Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hammarskjöld went down near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia and is the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after his death.
Négritude was built on a French word that was derogatory at the time, and its writers drew on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
Q 24Which Martinique-born psychiatrist joined Algeria's independence struggle and wrote The Wretched of the Earth?
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon dictated the book in Tunis after being diagnosed with leukemia, and it was published in 1961 shortly before his death.
Q 25Which movement opened Algeria's war of independence against France with a declaration and attacks on 1 November 1954?
National Liberation Front
The National Liberation Front, known by its French initials FLN, went on to negotiate the country's independence directly with the French government.
Q 26Which 1962 agreement, named after a French lakeside town, brought a ceasefire to the Algerian War?
Évian Accords
The Évian Accords stopped the fighting on 19 March 1962, and Algeria was pronounced independent that July after a popular referendum.
Q 27What name was given to Algeria's European settlers, about 800,000 of whom left for France after independence in 1962?
Pieds-noirs
Pieds-noirs literally means black feet. The harkis, Muslim auxiliaries who had fought for France, got far less help to escape.
Q 28Which leader of the ZANU guerrilla movement won the 1980 election that ended white minority rule in Rhodesia?
Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe became prime minister on a promise of racial reconciliation, then held power as premier and president until a coup in 2017.
Q 29Which army chief seized power in the Congo in a bloodless 1965 coup and later renamed the country Zaire?
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko made the change in October 1971 as part of an authenticity programme meant to purge every colonial cultural influence.
Q 30Which symbol on the flag raised at the Gold Coast's independence was borrowed from Marcus Garvey's shipping line?
Black star
Black star was the emblem of Garvey's Black Star Line, which operated from 1919 to 1922; the flag itself was designed by the teacher Theodosia Okoh.