West African Colonies

Many European powers directly controlled large sections of West Africa until 1914. Portuguese explorers facing out to sea are depicted on a monument in Lisbon harbor. Since independence, are these countries closely linked to their former colonial powers? Think about what happened in the United States.

Answers:
Yes, just as the United States remained closer to Britain than France, even though the latter also had a revolution against tyranny!

From 1418 to 1914, European powers carved up Africa:

dark blue	British	reddish	Italian
very light blue	French	yellow	German
medium blue	Belgian

The the dark red color in the circles show the percent of Europeans in each country in 1939. For example, the Gold Coast (today Ghana), less than 1 percent of the population was European; in Algeria, the French represented over 10 percent. Europeans always were a tiny minority in African and Asian colonies.

Source: Paul Knox and Sallie Marston, Places and Regions in Global Context. p. 377.