State-building

• After independence, the new states needed to establish or strengthen the institutions of a sovereign state – governments, laws, a military, schools, administrative systems, etc.
• The amount of self-rule granted prior to independence, and assistance from the colonial power and/or international organisations after independence, varied greatly between colonial powers, and between individual colonies
• Except for a few absolute monarchies, most post-colonial states are either republics or constitutional monarchies. These new states had to devise constitutions, electoral systems, and other institutions of representative democracy

Language policy

• “Linguistic decolonization” entails the replacement of a colonizing (imperial) power’s language with a given colony’s indigenous language in the function of official language
• With the exception of colonies in Eurasia, linguistic decolonization did not take place in the former colonies-turned-independent states on the other continents

Nation-building

• Nation-building is the process of creating a sense of identification with, and loyalty to, the state
• Nation-building projects seek to replace loyalty to the old colonial power, and/or tribal or regional loyalties, with loyalty to the new state
• Elements of nation-building include creating and promoting symbols of the state like a flag and an anthem, monuments, official histories, national sports teams, codifying one or more Indigenous official languages, and replacing colonial place-names with local ones

Settled populations

• Decolonization is not an easy matter in colonies where a large population of settlers lives, particularly if they have been there for several generations.
  • These population, in general, had to be repatriated, often losing considerable property
• Example: A large Indian community lived in Uganda – as in most of East Africa – as a result of Britain colonizing both India and East Africa

Economic development

• Newly independent states also had to develop independent economic institutions – a national currency, banks, companies, regulation, tax systems, etc.
• Many colonies were serving as resource colonies which produced raw materials and agricultural products, and as a captive market for goods manufactured in the colonizing country. Many decolonized countries created programs to promote industrialization
• Some nationalized industries and infrastructure, had to engage themselves in land reform to redistribute land to individual farmers or create collective farms