The English-speaking countries of West Africa—Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia—were not fully contiguous and did not share identical linguistic conditions. English served as a native language for Sierra Leonean Creoles and Americo-Liberians, while Hausa-speaking peoples in northern Nigeria used their own language, which had been written before British arrival. The group was therefore held together less by a uniform linguistic society than by overlapping colonial and institutional connections.

British colonial rule affected the five countries unevenly. Coastal communities that had experienced British rule for more than a century developed strong links with similarly affected populations elsewhere in West Africa, while larger inland communities came under British rule only around the turn of the twentieth century. The passage describes this as the emergence of “two nations” within each country: small coastal communities connected to Britain or, in Liberia’s case, the United States, alongside much larger populations with different colonial histories.

After independence, political development diverged sharply. The Gambia remained a multiparty democracy; Ghana passed through civilian dictatorship, multiparty democracy, dominant-party rule, and military government; Sierra Leone experienced multiparty, one-party, and military regimes; Nigeria moved from turbulent multiparty government through thirteen years of military rule to an American-style presidential government; and Liberia shifted from personal autocracy to liberal one-party and then military rule.