The outbreak of war produced demonstrations of loyalty across the British West African colonies. Thousands volunteered for military service, funds were raised for war charities, and prayers were offered for an Allied victory. At the same time, educated West Africans increasingly expected political rewards for their wartime contribution. In Nigeria, the West African Pilot welcomed the Atlantic Charter in 1941 while criticising Winston Churchill for excluding the colonies from its scope.

Colonial governments made limited constitutional concessions during the war. In 1942, two African members were appointed to the Gold Coast Executive Council, including Nana Sir Ofori Atta, while two Nigerians were nominated to the Nigerian Executive Council in 1943. Sierra Leoneans were also appointed to that colony’s Executive Council in 1943. The appointment of A. L. Adu and K. A. Busia as district commissioners in the Gold Coast in 1942 was presented as a major break with the exclusion of Africans from field administration since 1900.

Wartime administration integrated the British West African colonies more closely into the British economy. From 1942, a senior British cabinet minister was based in Accra to coordinate the colonial war effort, while governments sought to maximise production. In Nigeria, 18,000 labourers were forced to work in mines; official marketing boards were established for export crops; and production campaigns promoted palm kernels and groundnuts as urgently needed wartime commodities.

State intervention strengthened expatriate firms because colonial authorities found them easier to use for enforcing controls than the growing class of African entrepreneurs and small traders. Price restrictions on primary produce, inflation caused by import shortages, and migration toward towns and wartime industries intensified nationalist resentment. Trade unions multiplied in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, and Nigeria experienced a forty-four-day general strike against the cost of living in 1945.

The war also encouraged local production of food, furniture, and soap, while construction and communications expanded. Airfields were built or enlarged across the four colonies and in Liberia as RAF and American staging posts. In Sierra Leone, the colony was connected with the Protectorate for the first time by a motorable road. These developments created new economic possibilities, but they also brought disruptive controls, inequalities, and closer colonial intervention.

By the end of the war, West African forces numbered about 150,000, compared with 8,000 at the beginning. Most had volunteered rather than been conscripted. They fought in the Ethiopian campaign, helped to dismantle the Italian colonial empire there, served alongside white South Africans, and fought the Japanese in Burma after deployments to India. Other West Africans served as Pioneers in the Middle East.

West African soldiers generally remained under British command, and African rates of pay were substantially lower than British rates. Nevertheless, military wages brought cash into subsistence economies and compared favourably with civilian earnings in many areas. Technical training created new opportunities, while the contrast between military prospects and civilian life encouraged ex-servicemen to seek redress from post-war politicians, especially in the Gold Coast.

Military service broadened many participants’ experiences, although its political influence cannot be measured precisely. Gold Coast ex-servicemen became prominent in the 1948 Accra disturbances, while Mokwugo Okoye, a leader of Nigeria’s Zikist movement, was identified as an exceptional ex-serviceman who became a political leader. The wartime experience nevertheless contributed collectively to a critical reassessment of colonial society.

West African students abroad remained politically active throughout the war. By 1945, about 150 were in Britain and about 30 in the United States. The West African Students Union in London raised African political issues with British ministers and MPs, including the need for substantial constitutional change. Contacts with new political concepts and systems also influenced students in the United States, particularly among Ibos who later became nationalist leaders.

After 1945, the demand for self-government grew, especially in the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The passage distinguishes self-government from immediate independence, arguing that colonial equality remained uncertain and that rule by Europeans was experienced as humiliating. Nationalists sought the right to govern the colonial units created by European rule rather than to recreate older polities such as Kano or Asante as independent states.

Independence in British West Africa followed prolonged negotiations and preparation rather than violent revolutionary struggle. The Gambia did not experience a demand for independence until the early 1960s, while Sierra Leone’s independence movement was shaped by tensions between the colony and protectorate. In Nigeria, the Northern People’s Congress initially prioritised protecting northern interests from southern political assumptions rather than demanding independence.