Africa in World War II

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

North Africa campaigns, famines, Free French Africa, U.S. entry via bases and logistics.

1. Why did Italy invade Ethiopia in 1935, and what were the consequences for Africa and the League of Nations?
2. How did European colonial powers transform Africa into a military and economic base before and during World War II?
3. How did wartime colonial policies contribute to food shortages and famines across Africa?
4. Why did Africa become strategically important to the Allied war effort, and which major ports and military bases played key logistical roles?
5. How did African colonies contribute to the survival and success of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement after France fell in 1940?
6. How did World War II contribute to the growth of African nationalism and the eventual collapse of European colonial rule after 1945?

Table of Contents

When we talk about World War II, we usually think of the big players like Germany, Japan, the USSR, the US, and Britain. But Africa, like during WWI, actually ended up being one of the most critical backdrops of the entire conflict. Millions of Africans were pulled into the war effort—not just fighting on the front lines, but working as laborers and supplying the raw materials that kept the Allies going. Ultimately, the war completely reshaped African societies and essentially fast-tracked the collapse of European colonial rule across the continent.

Almost one million Africans died during this new, European-started war. 1.2 million Africans served in Allied forces.

Before the War (1935–1939)

Before World War II even officially kicked off, Africa was already turning into a battleground because of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Benito Mussolini was obsessed with building a «New Roman Empire,» so he targeted one of the very few independent nations left on the continent. He didn’t hold back, either—using overwhelming force and even dropping mustard gas on soldiers and civilians alike. The League of Nations wagged its finger and condemned the invasion, but they didn’t actually do anything to stop it. It was a massive wake-up call that showed the world international law was basically teeth-less.

Ethiopia ended up occupied for five years, and Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to flee into exile. But the real fallout went way beyond the battlefield. Seeing the League of Nations completely abandon Ethiopia shattered its credibility across Africa. For a generation of Africans and anti-colonial thinkers, it was proof that all Europe’s talk about justice, democracy, and self-determination didn’t apply to colonized people.

Militarization of Africa by Europe

Even before the first shots of World War II were officially fired, European powers were already busy turning Africa into a massive military and economic staging ground. Britain and France started rapidly expanding everything—beefing up ports, laying down new railroads, and building out military bases and airfields across their colonies to prep for the coming war.

But it wasn’t just about building bases; they completely overhauled African economies, too. Colonial governments forced a hard pivot toward harvesting whatever raw materials the Allied war machine might need, squeezing out massive amounts of copper, rubber, tin, cotton, and palm oil, alongside huge quantities of food crops. By the time the war actually arrived, Africa’s infrastructure and daily economic life had been completely hijacked to serve global military demands.

To get ready, colonial governments poured resources into beefing up the continent’s infrastructure. Britain and France went into overdrive—modernizing ports, laying down new rail lines, and building out military bases and airfields so they could move troops, weapons, and supplies at a moment’s notice. They extended railroads directly to mines and farmlands to speed up exports, and cut new roads through the landscape just for military logistics. The airfields they threw up across North, East, and West Africa would later become crucial pitstops for Allied planes bouncing between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Ultimately, everything came down to geography. Controlling the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Cape of Good Hope depended entirely on holding bases in places like Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and South Africa. When the fighting actually started, these installations didn’t just support local battles—they became the backbone for major campaigns across North Africa and the Middle East, turning the continent into one of the Allies’ most important logistical lifelines.

Material and human resources

Alongside the military buildup, colonial administrations completely overhauled African economies to gear up for the coming war. Instead of focusing on local needs, entire colonies were forced to pivot, turning their economies into giant supply chains tasked with feeding European industries and military forces.

This meant a massive, often forced, spike in the production of raw materials. Colonial governments demanded more copper from places like Zambia and the Belgian Congo, tin from Nigeria, and rubber from Liberia. Gold was pumped out of South Africa and Ghana, while cotton, palm oil, and cocoa were stripped from West and East Africa alongside massive amounts of food earmarked for Allied troops. These weren’t just random commodities—they were the literal building blocks for the weapons, vehicles, ammo, uniforms, and electronics needed to fight a modern war.

Naturally, this total economic shift turned daily life for ordinary Africans upside down. To make it all happen, colonial governments started throwing around production quotas, hiking taxes, and aggressively pulling people into forced labor for mines, plantations, and military construction. On paper, exports and government revenues looked great, but on the ground, local communities were hit hard by severe food shortages, runaway inflation, and complete neglect of their own basic economic needs. By the time the war actually started in 1939, Africa’s economic survival had been pinned entirely to European military demands, locking the continent into its role as a critical lifeline for the Allies.

Famines

During World War II, colonial governments completely prioritized the Allied war effort over the basic survival of the people living under their rule. Authorities routinely seized massive amounts of grain, livestock, and crops to feed soldiers fighting across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. To make matters worse, they commandeered almost all the trucks, trains, and river boats for military use, making it next to impossible to move food between local communities. On top of that, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men were drafted into the military or forced into labor corps, draining the rural workforce and causing local food production to plummet.

This toxic mix of forced exports, labor shortages, and broken transportation networks triggered widespread food shortages. Daily staples like maize, rice, wheat, and cassava vanished from markets, especially in growing cities. As supplies dried up, prices skyrocketed, unleashing runaway inflation that left families unable to afford even the basics. Because colonial rulers forced farmers to focus on export commodities rather than food for their own neighbors, the shortages just kept getting worse.

With the official food markets empty, booming black markets stepped into the vacuum. Food was sold illegally at inflated prices, which lined the pockets of unscrupulous traders but pushed ordinary families to the brink. To survive, people began skipping meals, switching to less nutritious substitutes, or foraging for wild plants. This steep drop in nutrition hit children and the elderly the hardest, wrecking immune systems and leaving entire populations vulnerable to deadly outbreaks of malaria, dysentery, and respiratory infections.

In some areas, these overlapping crises boiled over into full-blown famine. British East Africa—covering parts of modern-day Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—was hit especially hard when a severe drought collided with the wartime seizures and labor drains. Even as people starved, colonial officials stubbornly kept prioritizing military supply lines over local relief, dragging their feet on sending aid. While these famines never got the global media coverage of the 1943 Bengal Famine, they still caused immense suffering and took thousands of African lives.

Ultimately, these wartime food crises laid bare the deep corruption of the colonial system, proving it was designed strictly to drain wealth for European empires rather than protect local populations. For many Africans, watching their families starve while their food was shipped away was the final straw. This profound sense of betrayal fueled massive political anger after the war, supercharging the nationalist movements that demanded economic control, food security, and ultimately, total independence.

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.

Churchill famine

A number of the worst famines during World War II weren’t just natural disasters—they were actively made worse by the choices of European colonial governments. Time and again, military goals completely sidelined the basic survival needs of civilians, as livestock, grain, shipping lanes, and local transport were hijacked to keep the war machine running. While droughts, crop diseases, and general wartime chaos certainly triggered these crises, historians generally agree that government policies are what turned them truly catastrophic.

The most notorious example of this is the 1943 Bengal Famine in British India, which claimed the lives of an estimated two to three million people. As Prime Minister, Winston Churchill oversaw a government that kept prioritizing military shipping and stockpiling food for the war effort, even as reports of mass starvation mounted. Britain also carried out a ruthless «denial policy» in coastal areas, destroying local boats and burning rice stocks just to keep them out of the hands of a potential Japanese invasion. Churchill repeatedly rejected or dragged his feet on requests to send emergency grain shipments, claiming that cargo ships were needed elsewhere. Most modern historians conclude that while Churchill didn’t outright plot to cause the famine, his administration’s cold calculations—and his personal indifference to Indian suffering—massively inflated the death toll.

But Britain wasn’t the only empire putting the military ahead of human lives. Across Africa, British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese rulers all ruthlessly seized food, livestock, labor, and transport to back the Allies. These policies triggered severe inflation and localized famines all over East, Central, and West Africa. In the Belgian Congo, rural communities were crushed under forced quotas to mine strategic minerals and grow food for troops. Meanwhile, in French West Africa, both the Vichy regime and later the Free French drained the region of agricultural goods, leaving locals with bare cupboards. You saw the exact same pattern in Portuguese colonies like Angola and Mozambique, where forced labor and a hyper-focus on cash crops for export completely broke the back of local food production.

These wartime food crises laid bare the ugly reality of colonial rule. Across Asia and Africa, millions of people were left with the undeniable realization that their occupiers were perfectly willing to sacrifice them to win a European war. This profound betrayal shattered any remaining belief that imperial rule was legitimate, supercharging the nationalist and independence movements that would tear these empires apart after 1945.

Africa for the freedom of Europe

During the war, Africa became the ultimate logistical crossroads, bridging the gap between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The Allies leaned heavily on a network of major ports and military bases scattered across the continent—from Dakar, Freetown, and Takoradi in West Africa, up to Casablanca, Algiers, and Oran in North Africa, and down to Mombasa, Cape Town, and Durban. These weren’t just random pitstops; they were vital safe havens that protected shipping routes across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, kept naval fleets running, and served as critical transit hubs for moving troops, planes, fuel, and supplies across three continents.

Meanwhile, the situation in French Africa took a dramatic political turn after France fell to Germany in 1940. Initially, most French colonies stayed loyal to the puppet, pro-German Vichy regime. But over time, momentum shifted, and a massive chunk of French African territories broke away to join Charles de Gaulle and the Free French movement. This was a massive turning point. These colonies stepped up by providing a steady stream of soldiers, funding, raw recruits, and crucial military bases that allowed the Free French to keep fighting alongside the Allies. In fact, these African territories became the primary staging grounds for the liberation campaigns in North Africa and Europe—and many historians argue that without Africa’s backing, the Free French movement would have collapsed entirely.

After WWII

When the dust finally settled after 1945, there was no going back to the old colonial status quo. World War II had fundamentally broken the psychological grip of European empires. Hundreds of thousands of African veterans returned home with a glaring, unavoidable question: If we just shed our blood to fight for global freedom, why are we still living as colonial subjects?

This shared realization completely transformed political consciousness across the continent. Military service had given a generation of Africans advanced organizational skills, literacy, and a firsthand look at the world outside their borders. Veterans quickly teamed up with a rapidly expanding urban working class—people who had flooded into booming cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra to work in wartime industries. Together, they channeled their anger into unions, political parties, and protests. Many of the very soldiers who fought on the front lines became the masterminds behind the anti-colonial movement.

At the exact same time, the European powers were utterly spent. Britain was drowning in war debt, France was hollowed out by years of Nazi occupation, and Belgium was economically crippled. They simply no longer had the money, military power, or willpower to keep a tight grip on their overseas empires. Furthermore, the newly created United Nations was championing self-determination and human rights on the world stage. Though European powers tried to drag their feet, African leaders brilliantly hijacked the UN as a global megaphone to challenge the legitimacy of colonial rule.

The economic landscape they inherited was a mixed bag. On one hand, the war left behind upgraded roads, expanded ports, and better rail networks. On the other hand, it left African economies deeply distorted—hyper-focused on strip-mining raw materials for European markets rather than building up local manufacturing.

Yet, the political momentum was unstoppable. What followed was a massive domino effect of decolonization. Starting with Libya in 1951, followed by nations like Sudan, Ghana, and Guinea, and culminating in a flood of independence victories across the 1960s for countries like Nigeria, Congo, Algeria, and Kenya, almost the entire continent won back its freedom within two decades.

Ultimately, World War II didn’t just happen in Africa; it fundamentally remade it. Africa gave the Allied war machine everything it had—supplying a million soldiers, millions more laborers, and the vital copper, rubber, and uranium that won the war. In return, Africans faced brutal exploitation, inflation, and devastating famines. But that crucible also triggered a massive political awakening. By draining the strength of European empires and igniting an unquenchable demand for self-rule, the war became the ultimate catalyst for the modern, independent Africa we know today.