The Second World War had a profound impact on colonial Africa, signs of which were obvious to some but by no means all observers at the end of the war. By 1945 the major European colonial powers had declined in global power and status and were now overshadowed by two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In fact, the war had been won by Soviet manpower and American financial and industrial power. France and Belgium, although among the ‘victors’, had suffered defeat and foreign occupation in 1940–45. Italy had rapidly lost the empire that it had gained mainly in the 20th century by conquest. Although among the Allied ‘Big Four’ powers, Britain had also suffered a decisive defeat at Singapore in 1942, and the wartime ‘Quit India’ campaign pointed up the acute difficulties of retaining control over the subcontinent.

Although India's future within the Empire was almost certainly a lost cause, Europeans acquainted with Africa, along with most literate Africans, expected colonial rule in the continent to endure for many years to come. The Colonial Office continued to recruit men and women for a lifetime of service in Africa. Colonial control was firmly entrenched and faced few serious indigenous challenges. African political parties were small and poorly funded and led by urban conservative elites, with limited influence mainly restricted to the towns. Trade-union membership had grown during the war years and continuing measures were being taken to prevent unions from engaging in politics. Like previous governments, the new Labour government in Britain, despite its own deep trade-union roots, was unwilling to see this kind of political linkage develop in the colonies. Africa's exports of mineral and agricultural resources were seen as vital to Britain's postwar economic recovery and as a means of propping up a weak sterling system against the power of the American dollar. Postwar plans were also in hand to encourage further European emigration to the white settler colonies of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia as well as to South Africa. Despite this confidence of continued alien control over Africa colonies, the war had subtly and profoundly brought change to the continent. Towns had grown in size, wartime shortages compounded by inflation hit real incomes and generated discontent, felt most keenly and increasingly expressed by people in the expanding urban centres.