Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1970s

During the 1970s important transformations took place in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the crisis of the postcolonial processes of of state-building went with a growing reliance on authoritarian rule, the exhaustion of the state-led development models culminated in the debt crisis at the end of the decade. The deterioration of African political institutions was exacerbated by a number of armed conflicts, that exposed the continent to Cold War penetration. This issue of the Italian journal Afriche e Orienti focuses on two of the most influential factors that shaped the African political landscape during the 1970s: the end of the Portuguese colonial empire and the decolonization of Zimbabwe.