Britain emerged among the war's victors, and its rule expanded into new areas, the heavy costs of the war undermined its capacity to maintain the vast empire. The British had suffered millions of casualties and liquidated assets at an alarming rate. This led to debt accumulation, upending of capital markets and manpower deficiencies in the staffing of far-flung imperial posts in Asia and the African colonies. Nationalist sentiment grew in both old and new Imperial territories, fuelled in part by having participated as Empire troops in the war.
The rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements in the subject territories and the changing economic situation of the world in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home. The Empire's end began with the onset of the Second World War, when a deal was reached between the British government and the leaders of the Indian independence movement. In this deal the Indians would co-operate and remain loyal during the war, after which they would be granted independence. Following India's lead, nearly all of Britain's other colonies would become independent over the next two decades.
The end of the Empire gathered speed after Britain's efforts during World War II left the country all but exhausted and found its former allies disinclined to support the colonial status quo. The Empire was increasingly regarded as an unnecessary drain on public finances by politicians and civil servants, if not by the general public.
World War II can be best described as a pyrrhic victory to the British Empire. The economic costs of WWII were far greater for the British Empire than those of WWI. Britain was heavily bombed and the war cost the Empire almost its entire merchant fleet. World War II fatally undermined Britain's already weakened commercial and financial leadership and heightened the importance of the Dominions (British overseas territories including Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and the United States as a source of military assistance.
In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, post-war decolonisation was accomplished with almost unseemly haste in the face of increasingly powerful, and sometimes mutually conflicting, nationalist movements, with Britain rarely fighting to retain any territory.
The end of Britain's Empire in Africa came with exceptional rapidity, leaving the newly-independent states ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of sovereignty. Ghana's independence (1957) after a ten-year nationalist political campaign was followed by that of Nigeria and Somaliland (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (1961), Uganda (1962), Kenya and Zanzibar (1963), The Gambia (1965), Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) and Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) in 1966 and Swaziland (1968).
British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations. Kenya had already provided an example in the Mau Mau uprising of violent conflict exacerbated by white landownership and reluctance to concede majority rule. White minority rule in South Africa remained a source of bitterness within the Commonwealth until the Union of South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961. It was not until 1994 that South Africa was able to discard the shackles of apartheid and gain “one man one vote” for all South Africans.
Although the white-dominated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended in the independence of Malawi, formerly Nyasaland, and Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia, in 1964, Southern Rhodesia's white minority, a self-governing colony since 1923, declared independence from Britain with their Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) rather than submit to equality with black Africans. The support of South Africa's apartheid government kept the Rhodesian regime in place until 1979, when agreement was reached for majority rule in an independent, newly named, Zimbabwe.
The French colonial empire had begun to fall apart during the Second World War, when various parts of their empire were occupied by foreign powers. French defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 was soon followed by war in the French colony of Algeria in North Africa. This culminated in independence for Algeria in 1962 with all of the other French colonies in Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo) being granted independence in 1960.
The Belgian Congo, along with the smaller Belgian colony of Ruanda-Urundi (later split into the separate states of Rwanda and Burundi) followed a similar peaceful path to independence in the early 1960s.
Only Portugal attempted to subdue the emerging nationalist movements in its African colonies of Mozambique and Angola, but without success, finally losing control in 1974.
Source: Wikipedia – British Empire
Africa - today
The magnificent diversity of life that we see in Africa today is living testimony to the extraordinary success of evolution, and the culmination of a 100 million years of climatic and geological change that started with the breaking up of Gondwana, the ancient super-continent that split to scatter Africa, Australia, Antarctica, India and South America across the southern hemisphere. Unlike many of the other fragments, the African continent shifted only slightly, and slowly, resulting in an evolution of animal and plant communities unlike anywhere else on earth.
Mountains, rivers, lakes, deserts & forests
Africa’s mountains, rivers, forests and open grass plains are all intimately connected to each other. Winds, caused by the formation of pressure systems, and affected by the spin of the Earth on its axis, pick up moisture evaporating off the oceans and sweep inland from the sea, their flow altered only by the chains of mountains that lie in their path. Forced upwards in order to flow over the peaks, most of this moisture condenses and falls as rain, hail or snow. This rain sustains the forests and savannah and the wildlife that live there, with all of Africa’s rivers rising from the huge central plateau and mountainous regions of the interior, only to flow back to the sea.
Mountains
These mountains include the Ethiopian Highlands or ‘Roof of Africa’, the Hoggar, Tibesti and Air Mountains found in the midst of the Sahara desert, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, Mount Cameroon in West Africa and the Drakensburg range in South Africa. Alongside these peaks is to be found the Great Rift Valley, which includes Mount Kilimanjaro (the name Kilimanjaro is comes from Swahili word kilima, meaning mountain and njaro means whiteness), Mounts Kenya, Meru and Elgon, the Aberdares, the Virunga volcanoes (Africa’s most recently active) plus the nearby Ruwenzoris or ‘Mountains of the Moon’.
Rivers
Four giant rivers, the Nile (the world’s longest), Congo, Zambezi (the world's oldest) and Niger – and a host of smaller waterways – drain the continent, directing water out to the sea.
Lakes
In places, enormous inland lakes (including Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi, Chad & Turkana), deltas and floodplains sustain prolific and colourful gatherings of wildlife. Lake Victoria is the second largest in the world in terms of surface area, whilst Lake Tanganyika, which flows into the Congo River, is the second deepest in the world at 147m (4820ft), and amongst the clearest waters anywhere on Earth. Then there is the Okavango – the world’s largest inland delta.
Deserts
The Sahara, which covers one fifth of the African continent, is the driest and largest desert in the world. The Namib is the most ancient – at 80 million years old. In addition, dry arid lands cover
