When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939 there were barely two independent countries in Africa – Egypt and Liberia. In both cases, though, it was an independence that was significantly circumscribed. In the case of Egypt, although the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty had nominally brought to an end the British occupation, it nevertheless also provided for a residual presence for a further period of twenty years of up to 10,000 British troops and 400 British airmen together with their ‘necessary ancillary staff’. Their residual presence was demanded on the basis that the strategic international waterway of the Suez Canal had to be protected. As for Liberia, it was independent de jure but otherwise heavily dependent on US economic support, in particular on the rubber plantations of the Firestone Company. Politically, too, it was also almost the exclusive preserve of the descendants of its mid-nineteenth century African-American founders, further diluting the practical significance of independence for the majority of its population.

A third country, Ethiopia, was also independent de jure. However, in 1935 it was occupied by Italy and, even after 1941, notwithstanding Emperor Haile Selassie's return, it was largely administered by its British ‘liberators’. Ethiopia would only regain its formal, though still limited, independence late in 1944. It could perhaps be argued that South Africa was also an independent country but, as the majority black population was under minority white rule, this independence, too, could hardly be regarded as anything more than a fiction.

The two main colonial powers were Britain, whose colonial territories ranged across the whole continent, and France, whose colonial territories were predominantly in North and West Africa but also included Madagascar and French Somaliland (Djibouti) in East Africa. Other colonial powers included Portugal, which controlled several colonial territories, notably Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, Belgium, which controlled the colonial territories of the Congo and Rwanda/Burundi, and Spain, which controlled the colonial territories of the Spanish Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea. As both Portugal and Spain were neutral throughout the Second World War, as regards the ACHPR, their historical significance only comes into play after the other African colonial territories had gained their independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s.