The attainment of sovereignty in Africa was a staggered and diverse process, with each new nation inheriting a unique set of political, economic, and social conditions from its colonial past. An examination of the initial state of Sudan, South Sudan, and their nine neighbours reveals that independence was rarely a “clean slate”. Instead, it was a transfer of power over colonial-era structures fraught with unresolved issues, setting the stage for the turmoil that would often continue post the initial five years of state transition. The premise of this paper is that the regimes in Juba and Khartoum have directly employed tactics that are powerful manifestations of a regional pathology in post-colonial administration, affecting both Sudan and South Sudan. Sudan’s initial crisis exemplified its failure to integrate diverse populations under a dominant post-colonial project rooted in an Arab identity. In contrast, South Sudan’s crisis is a more contemporary and destructive variation, characterised by the troubled legacy of the National Congress Party (NCP) regime and the persistent, disastrous repercussions of its failure to achieve a functioning state.
Understanding the initial conditions across the region
Egypt’s independence in 1922 was nominal. The unilateral declaration by the United Kingdom ended the formal protectorate but left Britain with four reserved points that guaranteed its continued control over the security of the Suez Canal, the defence of Egypt, the protection of foreign interests, and the administration of Sudan. This arrangement established a veiled protectorate, ensuring the struggle for full sovereignty would dominate Egyptian politics for decades. Similarly, Ethiopia regained independence in 1941 after a five-year Italian occupation. Still, the restoration of Emperor Haile Selassie was achieved with significant British military assistance, translating into a period of heavy British influence over the nation’s affairs. While its ancient history sets it apart from its colonised neighbours, Ethiopia faced immense challenges of reconstruction and modernisation within a feudal system.
Libya’s path to independence on December 24, 1951, was unique, as it was the first nation to achieve sovereignty through the United Nations. Formerly an Italian colony administered by Britain and France post-World War II, it was forged into a federal constitutional monarchy under King Idris I, uniting the three historically distinct and disparate regions of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. This UN-led state-building exercise created a nation with a strong tribal structure but exceptionally weak national cohesion. Sudan’s independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium on January 1, 1956, was granted to a state already on the brink of war. The 1955 Torit Mutiny, an uprising of southern soldiers against their northern officers, was a clear harbinger of the civil conflict that would define the country’s existence. Colonial policies had deliberately administered the Arab-Muslim North separately from the African, Christian, and Animist South, fostering deep-seated mistrust and inequality that post-independence “Sudanization” policies only exacerbated.
The “Class of 1960” saw Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) gain independence in a great wave of decolonisation. Chad (August 11) and CAR (August 13) emerged from French Equatorial Africa with weak state institutions and severe ethnic and regional cleavages, most notably the north-south, Muslim-Christian/African divide in Chad. The DRC’s independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960, was exceptionally chaotic. Minimal preparations had been made for the handover, resulting in an immediate mutiny of the army, the secession of its most prosperous province, and the collapse of central authority.
In East Africa, Uganda (October 9, 1962) and Kenya (December 12, 1963) achieved independence from Britain. Uganda was born from a fragile political coalition attempting to balance the power of its traditional kingdoms, especially the powerful Buganda, with the authority of a modern centralist state, an inherently unstable compromise. Kenya inherited the legacy of a settler-colonial economy. It was immediately plunged into a secessionist conflict in its northeastern region, the Shifta War, as ethnic Somalis sought to join a Greater Somalia. Two nations followed distinct paths shaped by protracted warfare. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia on May 24, 1993, after a thirty-year liberation war. This was a rare case of secession from another African state. The victorious Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) had defeated the Ethiopian army and its internal Eritrean rivals, allowing it to form a highly disciplined, deeply authoritarian, provisional government with no tolerance for opposition. Finally, South Sudan achieved independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011, through a referendum mandated by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. It was born as one of the world’s least developed nations, almost entirely dependent on oil revenues and foreign aid, and scarred by decades of war that had fostered deep-seated ethnic divisions within the liberation movement itself.
The nature of the liberation struggle profoundly shaped the initial post-independence regime. Where disciplined, ideologically cohesive military fronts like Eritrea’s EPLF achieved victory, the transition was in a highly centralised, single-party state that suppressed all dissent. In contrast, where independence was negotiated among competing nationalist parties, as in Kenya with the Kenya African National Union (KANU) versus the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), a brief and volatile period of multi-party politics ensued before one faction aggressively consolidated power. South Sudan’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a broad but ethnically and factionally divided military front, attempted to follow the Eritrean model of single-front rule, but lacked the EPLF’s internal discipline. This weakness would lead to its catastrophic implosion two years after achieving its goal.
The fragility of imported transitional constitutions
Upon gaining sovereignty, most of the nations in the region adopted constitutional frameworks modelled on those of their former European colonies. These documents, often embodying liberal democratic principles, proved universally fragile and were rapidly subverted, amended, or discarded entirely within the first five years of independence. This pattern reveals that constitutions were not sacrosanct social contracts for the first generation of post-colonial leaders but malleable instruments to be used in the raw pursuit and consolidation of power. Many states began with systems that mirrored those in Europe. Kenya’s 1963 constitution established a parliamentary system with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, represented by a governor-general. Chad’s 1960 constitution was modelled on the French Fifth Republic, establishing a parliamentary system, while Egypt’s 1923 constitution drew inspiration from Belgium’s. Sudan began its independent existence with a Transitional Constitution that created a parliamentary regime with a five-member Supreme Commission as head of state. The speed with which these frameworks were dismantled is striking. In Sudan, the parliamentary system was paralysed by factionalism, corruption, and economic crises, creating the pretext for Lt. General Ibrahim Abboud’s military coup on November 17, 1958. Abboud promptly suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and banned all political parties. Uganda provides one of the most flagrant examples of constitutional subversion. The 1962 independence constitution was a compromise designed to accommodate the country’s powerful traditional kingdoms within a federal structure. By 1966, facing a political crisis, Prime Minister Milton Obote unilaterally abrogated it, introducing a new constitution to a parliament surrounded by troops. This act earned it the name “pigeonhole constitution”, as members were told to find copies in their mail slots after the fact. This was followed by the 1967 republican constitution, which abolished the kingdoms and cemented Obote’s absolute presidential power.
This trend was repeated across the region. In Chad, the parliamentary system lasted only two years before President François Tombalbaye pushed through a new constitution in 1962 that created a powerful presidency and established a one-party state under his Chadian Progressive Party (PPT). President David Dacko followed a similar playbook in the Central African Republic, amending to transform his regime into a one-party state before being overthrown in a 1965 coup by Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who abolished the constitution entirely. Kenya’s transition was more gradual but equally effective. The 1963 regionalist constitution, the Majimbo system, was systematically dismantled. In 1964, Kenya became a republic, and by 1966, a series of amendments had merged the bicameral legislature, stripped the regions of their power, and concentrated authority in the executive, creating a de facto one-party state. In Eritrea, the process was more straightforward: the constitution ratified in 1997 was never implemented. The government cited the 1998 border war with Ethiopia as the reason. Still, the result was the suspension of the indefinite constitutional rule and the PFDJ’s entrenchment as the sole power.
A common thread in this political evolution was the swift dismantling of federal or quasi-federal arrangements. These systems, designed to manage ethnic and regional diversity, were viewed by the new ruling elites not as tools for unity but as threats to their control over the state and its resources. Libya’s federal monarchy, which balanced the three provinces of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan, was abolished by King Idris I in 1963 in favour of a unitary state. Obote’s destruction of Uganda’s kingdoms in 1966-67 and Kenyatta’s neutering of Kenya’s regional assemblies served the same purpose: the absolute centralisation of power. This universal drive to centralise, often concentrating power in the hands of a dominant ethnic or regional group, became a primary cause of the very secessionist movements and civil wars it was intended to prevent. South Sudan presents a unique case. The president holds absolute power, with all institutions serving his will. A self-proclaimed tribalist, he has led the nation into war within just two years of independence.
Pathways to dictatorship, coups, and one-party states
The rapid decay of nascent democratic institutions across the region created a power vacuum that authoritarian rulers invariably occupied. This consolidation of power followed two primary pathways: the direct military coup d’état and the more gradual, quasi-legal political process of creating a one-party state. In both scenarios, weak state institutions proved incapable of managing the intense political competition of the post-independence era, making them vulnerable to capture by a single “strongman” leader or a dominant faction. This process was not merely about individual ambition but a structural failure of the post-colonial state, often sustained by the deliberate promotion of ethnic or regional hegemony.
In Sudan, less than three years after independence, the parliamentary government, paralysed by factionalism and an economic crisis stemming from poor cotton sales, was overthrown in a bloodless coup in November 1958. Lt. General Ibrahim Abboud, the army chief, suspended the constitution, banned political parties, and established the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to rule, setting a durable precedent for military intervention in Sudanese politics. The Congo Crisis provided the stage for two coups by Army Chief of Staff Joseph Mobutu. In September 1960, he intervened to neutralise the deadlocked President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba. After a chaotic interim period, Mobutu seized power definitively in November 1965, establishing a kleptocratic military dictatorship that would last for over 30 years. In the Central African Republic, the pattern was repeated on New Year’s Eve 1965, when Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the army chief and cousin of President Dacko, overthrew the government, abolished the constitution, and later proclaimed himself emperor.
An alternative approach involved the political and legislative suppression and co-option or neutralisation of the opposition. President Tombalbaye moved swiftly in Chad, banning all opposition parties in January 1962, and using a new constitution to create a one-party state under his PPT. His authoritarian rule was built on a foundation of ethnic hegemony, explicitly favouring his own southern Sara ethnic group in the civil service and military, which directly alienated the Muslim north and ignited the civil war. In Uganda, Prime Minister Obote used the 1966 crisis to crush his political rivals, arresting five cabinet ministers and deposing President Mutesa. Through the “pigeonhole” and 1967 constitutions, he abolished the powerful kingdoms, centralised all power, and by 1969 banned opposition parties from formalising his one-party state. Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta achieved a similar result through co-optation and coercion. After the main opposition party, KADU, voluntarily dissolved and merged with KANU, Kenyatta faced a new challenge from the leftist Kenya People’s Union (KPU), formed by his former Vice President Oginga Odinga in 1966. The KPU was systematically harassed, and its leaders were detained before it was ultimately banned in 1969. Still, the groundwork for a de facto one-party state was firmly laid within the first five years of independence. While rhetorically promoting national unity, Kenyatta’s rule widely favoured his Kikuyu ethnic group, especially in the highly sensitive area of land redistribution following the colonial era. In Libya, King Idris I banned all political parties after riots followed the 1952 elections, establishing an absolute monarchy decades before the more infamous 1969 coup by Muammar Gaddafi.
Finally, the new autocrats in South Sudan did not govern in isolation; they derived their power from neighbouring countries and catered to a specific constituency often defined by ethnicity or region. In Sudan, the state represented the hegemony of the northern Arab-Islamic elite. This situation made the Southern rebellion inevitable, rooted in structural factors rather than a political dispute. The authoritarian state served as a tool for maintaining and enforcing this dominance. Sudan’s crisis arose from the hegemonic project of the northern Arab-Islamic elite, which sought to impose its identity on the entire nation, thus marginalising the southern populations. This mirrors a form of ethnic favouritism seen in countries like Chad and Kenya. In contrast, South Sudan’s situation is more dire. It represents a violent struggle to control the state and its oil revenues using the ruling party, characterised by acute ethnic hegemony, kleptocracy, and deception.
The post-colonial project, marked by a dominant Arab identity in the North since 1956 and Dinka nationalism in South Sudan from 2011, has proven to be a particularly damaging variant of state suicide. Compared to their neighbours, the experiences of Sudan and South Sudan provide a powerful and sobering lesson regarding the immense challenges of nation-building, especially given the troubled legacy of the National Congress Party (NCP) regime and the lasting catastrophic consequences of its failure. Sudan’s war continued a pre-independence conflict created by colonial policy. It was a struggle over the very definition and identity of the Sudanese nation. While many neighbouring states experienced civil wars, none suffered the unique pathology of South Sudan turning against itself with such speed and ferocity, destroying the very nation it had fought to establish.
Dr Ayine Nigo is an author and lecturer at the University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. He can be reached via nigoayine@gmail.com
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