Africa in World War I

This is just a simplified guide. The questions are not central to the discussion in this class, but rather basic starting points.

Prof. Jorge Majfud

African soldiers, labor, famine, and the collapse of German colonies. Ethiopia, MI5 and Benito Mussolini.

1. Why did Africa become an immediate battlefield when World War I began in 1914?
2. Who were the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, and why were they important during World War I?
3. Why did African porters suffer some of the highest casualties during World War I in Africa?
4. What were the main social consequences of forced labor and military recruitment in African colonies during World War I?
5. What happened to Germany’s African colonies after its defeat in WWI?
6. How did World War I contribute to the growth of African nationalism?

Table of Contents

Africa in World War I (1914–1918)

Why Africa Matters in World War I

Although World War I is often presented as a European conflict, Africa became one of its major battlefields and one of its largest sources of soldiers, laborers, food, and raw materials.

Total deaths associated with the war in Africa: approximately 450,000 to well over 1 million. Most modern historians consider a total death toll of around 700,000–1,000,000 to be a plausible range, while emphasizing that the true number is unknowable due to incomplete colonial records.

(In Europe, more than 15 million people died, while over 100,000 Americans died in the same conflict.)

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Africa was instantly dragged into the conflict. It wasn’t a sideshow that developed later; it was an immediate overseas battlefield. The reason was simple: Germany held four major colonies on the continent—Togoland, Kamerun, German South West Africa, and German East Africa. But they were completely cut off. The British Royal Navy controlled the seas, leaving these German territories isolated and surrounded by lands ruled by Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and South Africa. For the Allies, the strategy was obvious. By seizing these colonies, they could wipe out German radio stations and naval bases, secure vital shipping lanes, and keep Germany from harassing its neighbors.

French West and Central Africa (Tirailleurs Sénégalais)

Soldiers were pulled from across French West and Central Africa, including modern-day Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Chad. As a core element of the French colonial army, they weren’t just kept in localized conflicts—they were shipped off to the war’s heaviest, bloodiest theaters, from the muddy trenches of the Western Front to Gallipoli, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Their deployment proved beyond a doubt just how much France’s survival rested on African shoulders.

Yet, fighting for the flag didn’t buy them equality. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais dealt with blatant racial discrimination at every turn, pulling lower pay than their European counterparts, enduring worse treatment, and facing a hard ceiling on promotions. On top of the systemic bias, they were routinely thrown into the meat grinder of the Western Front, taking staggering casualties. When the survivors finally returned home, they expected their sacrifices to translate into basic rights and recognition. Instead, the colonial administration shut the door in their faces. But the genie was out of the bottle—their shared anger and newfound political awareness laid the exact groundwork for the anti-colonial resistance that would sweep through French Africa years later.

Togoland and Kamerun

The fighting started almost the moment war was declared. British and French forces marched into Togoland within weeks, while a combined Allied force targeted Kamerun. Down south, troops from the Union of South Africa invaded German South West Africa. Meanwhile, East Africa turned into a brutal, grinding campaign where British, BThe East African Campaign was a completely different beast—it dragged on for the entire war, making it the longest military campaign fought on the continent. The German forces, led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, knew they couldn’t win a conventional war. Instead, they relied on hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, dodging major set-piece battles to launch surprise raids before vanishing into the brush. Von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his troops constantly on the move, marching across German East Africa, Portuguese Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). His strategy wasn’t to actually conquer the region, but to turn it into a massive distraction. By keeping hundreds of thousands of Allied troops and precious resources tied up in Africa, he kept them off the Western Front in Europe. It worked mechanically—von Lettow-Vorbeck was never actually beaten on the battlefield—but it didn’t matter in the end. Germany lost the war anyway, turning his brilliant tactical survival into a historical footnote.

elgian, and Portuguese forces—alongside thousands of troops from British India—chased German colonial forces led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

British and French forces invaded. German surrender after only a few weeks. It was the first German colony lost. In the Kamerun (1914–1916), the jungle campaign was long due to the difficult terrain. Thousands died from diseases and hunger. Germany surrendered.

But while European politicians drew up the plans, the actual burden of the war fell on locals. The vast majority of the people fighting, hauling supplies, and dying in these campaigns were Africans, turning the theater into an imperial war fought on African soil, by African hands, for European empires.

Namibia and South Africa

The campaign in German South West Africa (now Namibia) was one of the quickest and most decisive operations of the entire war in Africa. The invasion was pulled off mostly by troops from the Union of South Africa, which had only just become a self-governing British dominion a few years prior in 1910.* The combat troops were almost entirely white South Africans of both British and Afrikaner descent. However, because of the strict racial segregation of the era, thousands of Black and Coloured South Africans were kept out of combat and instead relegated to the brutal, essential work of transport, logistics, and heavy labor. After quickly putting down a brief internal rebellion by pro-German Afrikaners at home, the South African forces pushed into the colony in early 1915. By July, they had forced the German garrison to surrender. The victory gave South Africa total control over the territory, and after the war, the League of Nations handed it over as a mandate rather than returning it to Germany. This move kicked off decades of South African rule over Namibia, a occupation that didn’t end until the country finally won its independence in 1990.

*The South Africans who fought Germany during World War I were mainly from the Union of South Africa, a British dominion created in 1910. They fought on the side of the British Empire and the Allied Powers, which included White South African soldiers, English-speaking South Africans (descendants of British settlers), Afrikaners (Boers), descendants mainly of Dutch settlers who had fought Britain in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902).

Due to the deeply entrenched racial policies of the Union of South South Africa, Black men were strictly barred from carrying weapons or serving as front-line combat soldiers. Yet, the Allied war machine still relied on them to function. Thousands were funneled into labor and support units, most notably the South African Native Labour Corps. They took on the backbreaking, hazardous work that kept the military moving—loading mountains of supplies, laying down roads, digging front-line trenches, and hauling heavy equipment across both the African continent and the muddy fields of Europe.

But keeping the gears turning didn’t earn them basic decency. These workers faced brutal conditions, abysmal pay, and relentless discrimination, treated as second-class citizens compared to the white soldiers and laborers working alongside them. This systemic disregard culminated in one of the war’s darkest tragedies: the 1917 sinking of the troop ship SS Mendi. More than 600 members of the South African Native Labour Corps drowned when their ship was struck in the English Channel on its way to the Western Front. Back home, the government buried the story, completely ignoring their sacrifice in a stark reflection of the same racial cruelty that defined both their wartime service and the postwar era.

German East Africa (Tanzania)

The East African Campaign was a completely different beast–it dragged on for the entire war, making it the longest military campaign fought on the continent. The German forces, led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, knew they couldn’t win a conventional war. Instead, they relied on hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, dodging major set-piece battles to launch surprise raids before vanishing into the brush. Von Lettow-Vorbeck kept his troops constantly on the move, marching across German East Africa, Portuguese Mozambique, and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). His strategy wasn’t to actually conquer the region, but to turn it into a massive distraction. By keeping hundreds of thousands of Allied troops and precious resources tied up in Africa, he kept them off the Western Front in Europe. It worked mechanically—von Lettow-Vorbeck was never actually beaten on the battlefield—but it didn’t matter in the end. Germany lost the war anyway, turning his brilliant tactical survival into a historical footnote.

The cost of the European War for Africa

While history books often frame World War I as a purely European conflict, the reality is that the entire war machine leaned heavily on African shoulders. More than two million Africans were dragged into the war in one way or another. A few hundred thousand served as front-line combat soldiers, but the vast majority filled out the ranks as porters, guides, builders, and laborers. They populated the ranks of famous colonial units like Britain’s King’s African Rifles, France’s Tirailleurs Sénégalais, and Belgium’s Force Publique. Simply put, without African boots and backs, the campaigns on the continent would have ground to a halt overnight.

How these men ended up in uniform depended entirely on where they lived. A handful volunteered, lured by the promise of steady wages, a sense of adventure, or the hope of gaining some social standing. But for most, it wasn’t a choice. Colonial officials routinely forced local chiefs to hit strict recruitment quotas. If a village resisted, they faced brutal crackdowns, jail time, or outright violence. The draft effectively hollowed out entire communities, stripping villages of their young men and tearing apart the fabric of daily life.

The actual human toll was horrific. While tens of thousands died in the crossfire, far more were killed by disease, malnutrition, and a total lack of medical care. The worst of it fell on the millions of porters who served as human pack mules, hauling ammunition and food through roadless jungles and sun-baked savannahs. Forced to march for days under crushing loads, they dropped from starvation and tropical fevers at staggering rates. In fact, in several regions, a porter was far more likely to die than the front-line soldier he was supplying.

The fallout didn’t vanish when the guns went silent in 1918. With so many young men gone, fields went untended, and triggers for widespread famine pulled across the continent. Economies collapsed, families lost their primary providers, and communities spent years trying to dig themselves out from under the weight of wartime exploitation. Europe got its victory parades, but Africa paid the bill in blood and ruin. Yet, this trauma sparked a shift. The veterans who did make it home returned with a deep understanding of military tactics, a worldview expanded by global travel, and a burning resentment of colonial hypocrisy—planting the early seeds for the independence movements that would redefine the continent decades later.

Porters: The Forgotten Army

The true spine of the African theater (and its most overlooked tragedy) was the sheer reliance on human pack power. Because the battlefields lacked actual roads, vehicles were useless, and the local tsetse fly routinely wiped out horses and mules by the thousands. Colonial armies had only one choice: they put the weight of the war onto the backs of African porters.

Millions of men were swept up into this service, heavily targeted by forced conscription. They were transformed into human freight trains, hauling everything from crates of ammunition and heavy artillery barrels to medical supplies and food rations. These carriers walked thousands of kilometers through dense jungles and unforgiving terrain, completely cut off from their homes and families.

The human toll of this logistical nightmare was catastrophic. Porters died in staggering numbers, dropped by malaria, dysentery, sheer starvation, and the absolute neglect of the empires using them. In the East African Campaign alone, hundreds of thousands of carriers lost their lives. They were, without a doubt, the heaviest casualties of the entire conflict on the continent—yet they remain the most invisible.

Forced labor, famine, and diseases

During the war, colonial governments across the continent effectively weaponized forced labor, pulling entire populations into the conflict by decree. Africans were systematically rounded up to build supply roads, patch up railways, erect military camps, and clear plantations, all while hauling the endless tons of gear needed to keep the armies operational. Hollowing out the adult male population this way dealt a crippling blow to local communities, instantly wrecking traditional economies and leaving fields untended.

This sudden vacuum of working hands, paired with the insatiable appetite of the war machine, triggered widespread food shortages and outright famine. To make matters worse, colonial officials routinely seized crops and livestock to feed their troops, while slapping down strict travel bans that choked off local trade. Toss in the physical destruction of farmland and a timely wave of severe droughts, and millions of people were left entirely defenseless against starvation.

Predictably, the hunger crisis cracked the door wide open for disease. Malnourished bodies had zero defense against infections, and the crowded, filthy realities of military camps and forced migrations became perfect incubators for epidemics. Diseases like malaria, dysentery, and sleeping sickness tore through weakened populations at terrifying speeds.

Then came the final hammer blow: the 1918 influenza pandemic. The Spanish flu ripped across the continent, wiping out staggering numbers of Africans who were already pushed to the brink. When the dust settled, disease had claimed far more lives than bullets or artillery ever did. Ultimately, the war didn’t just touch Africa through front-line skirmishes—it shattered societies from the inside out through forced labor, starvation, and a catastrophic collapse of public health.

Political, social and economic consequences

From the ground level in Africa, World War I effectively hijacked local economies, twisting them into supply engines designed solely for European war efforts rather than actual domestic growth. While the extraction of highly prized resources like cotton, rubber, palm oil, copper, and gold skyrocketed, the profits skipped local hands entirely, flowing straight into the pockets of colonial governments and European corporations. Any infrastructure built during this time—like new railway lines or roads—wasn’t meant to connect or uplift African communities; it was laid down strictly to move troops and ship raw wealth out of the continent. Meanwhile, the financial weight of the whole operation was dumped right back onto the locals through spiking taxes, forced labor, and a depleted workforce, compounding an already brutal economic crisis.

When Germany collapsed in 1918, its African empire vanished with it, but this didn’t mean liberation for the people living there. Instead of returning the land to African control, the victorious Allies simply carved up the map and redistributed it among themselves under the guise of League of Nations «Mandates.» Britain grabbed Tanganyika alongside slices of Cameroon and Togoland, while France took the lion’s share of the latter two. Belgium locked down Ruanda and Urundi, and South Africa kept its grip on Namibia. For Africans on the ground, the fall of the German Empire wasn’t a dawn of independence—it was just a change of guards, trading one European master for another.

Yet, the war inadvertently triggered a massive shift in African political consciousness. Hundreds of thousands of men had been shipped overseas, fought in European armies, and witnessed a completely different side of the world. They came home asking the obvious question: why had they bled for the freedom of European nations while being denied basic political rights in their own homelands? This deep-seated frustration became a massive catalyst, fueling the rise of early African nationalism, labor strikes, and organized anti-colonial resistance.

While the actual push for independence wouldn’t reach its breaking point until after the Second World War, the trauma and hypocrisy of 1914–1918 laid the undeniable groundwork. The conflict completely exposed the double standard of European powers preaching democracy and self-determination at home while maintaining an iron imperial grip abroad. Ultimately, World War I became the definitive turning point, sparking the modern political movements that would eventually dismantle colonial rule decades later.

African immigration to Europe

During and after WWI, hundreds of thousands of Africans made the journey to Europe—not as tourists, but as soldiers and laborers keeping the Allied war effort afloat. While the vast majority were shipped to France, Britain, and Belgium, a small number managed to stay behind once the fighting stopped, planting the first seeds of permanent African communities in Europe. But staying didn’t mean fitting in. True legal equality was completely off the table. They remained categorized as «colonial subjects» rather than full citizens. It was a one-way street: the empires demanded their taxes and their military service, but refused to grant them the same political rights or legal protections enjoyed by white Europeans.

There were, of course, a few token exceptions. A handful of veterans received citizenship or special status—most notably the originaires from Senegal’s Four Communes, or individuals who hit incredibly strict imperial benchmarks. But for the overwhelming majority, bleeding on the battlefield didn’t buy a free pass out of systemic racism. If anything, their time in Europe only highlighted the absurdity of their situation. Walking through European cities made them realize the glaring hypocrisy of fighting for the freedom of nations that held them in chains back home. That realization didn’t fade; it traveled back with them, serving as direct inspiration for the nationalist and independence movements that would eventually fracture the empires.

Probably well below 1-5% of African colonial soldiers received full European citizenship after the war.

The exception of Ethiopia

Amidst a continent almost entirely swallowed up by European empires, Ethiopia stood as the glaring exception—a fiercely independent nation stubbornly holding its ground. When the war broke out, the country found itself caught in a high-stakes diplomatic tug-of-war. The young Emperor Lij Iyasu—who never actually had a formal coronation—tried to play a dangerous balancing act. Germany and the Ottoman Empire leaned on him heavily, trying to coax Ethiopia into joining the Central Powers and launching attacks on neighboring British and French territories. Meanwhile, Britain pulled out all the stops to keep the nation neutral.

But Iyasu’s tightrope walk collapsed from the inside. Whispers and outright accusations spread through the Christian ruling elite that the Emperor favored Islam and was getting too cozy with the Central Powers. The internal blowback was swift; by 1916, a coup toppled him from power. In his place, Empress Zewditu took the throne. By successfully weathering the storm of World War I without falling to foreign flags, Ethiopia didn’t just survive; it proved to the rest of the world that European domination over Africa was never absolute.

Mussolini and the British Intelligence Agency

During the chaos of the war, Britain aggressively scaled up its spy networks across Africa and the Middle East. They poured resources into critical chokepoints—most notably Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, East Africa, and Arabia. The goal wasn’t just to keep tabs on German and Ottoman movements, but to actively snuff out any anti-British rebellions before they could spark, while keeping local tribal leaders firmly in London’s corner. British operatives operated in the shadows, pulling political strings, bribing figures of influence, and neutralizing insurgencies. These ad-hoc wartime networks ultimately served as the rough blueprints for the tightly organized, institutionalized spy agencies that define modern British intelligence today.

It was during this frantic rush for wartime influence that British intelligence crossed paths with a young Benito Mussolini. Long before he became the iron-fisted dictator of Fascist Italy, Mussolini was just a radical socialist journalist who had been kicked out of his own party for loudly demanding that Italy join the war. In 1917, desperate to keep the Italian war effort from collapsing, the British government started cutting secret checks to Mussolini and his newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia. The cash was simple leverage: Britain wanted him to churn out aggressive, pro-war propaganda to keep the Italian public backing the Allies. This wasn’t some early endorsement of fascism; it was cold, short-term wartime pragmatism. The arrangement perfectly illustrates how far desperate governments will go, using media manipulation and dark money to tilt political outcomes in their favor.

This collision of secret networks, Ethiopia, and Mussolini effectively built the bridge between the First World War and the horrors of the next. While Ethiopia successfully guarded its independence through 1918, it couldn’t escape the long shadow of European imperial ambition. By 1935, a fully radicalized Mussolini looked south, invading Ethiopia in a brutal bid to forge a new Italian empire in Africa. Ethiopia’s subsequent defeat—and the toothless, hands-off response from the League of Nations—shattered any illusion that the new international order could actually stop a tyrant. It proved that the toxic, unresolved imperial rivalries left over from World War I hadn’t been fixed; they were just simmering under the surface, waiting to ignite World War II.

Ethiopia recovered its independence in 1941, during World War II, after five years of Italian occupation.

Theodore Roosevelt

(The document we are about to read uses terminology that is offensive today. I am preserving the original language because it helps us understand the racial assumptions of the period.)

“A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else…”

Theodore Roosevelt (1895)

Theodore Roosevelt, “Kidd’s ‘Social Evolution,’” The North American Review, Vol. 161, No. 1 (July 1895), p. 109.

“There is one feature in the expansion of the peoples of white, or European, blood during the past four centuries which should never be lost sight of, especially by those who denounce such expansion on moral grounds. On the whole, the movement has been fraught with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the lands over which the expansion took place.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1909)

Theodore Roosevelt, Address at the Methodist Episcopal Church Centennial Celebration, Washington, D.C., January 18, 1909.

Winston Churchill

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.”

Winston Churchill (1919)

Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume IV, Part 1, Documents 1896–1921. London: Heinemann, 1976. (Reproduces Churchill’s 12 May 1919 War Office minute from the Churchill Papers.)

“I do not admit… that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia… by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race… has come in and taken its place.”

Winston Churchill (1937)

Churchill, Winston. “Evidence before the Palestine Royal Commission,” 1937. In Churchill Papers, CHAR 2/317 (proof copy of evidence). Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), p. 120.