Africanization or Africanisation (lit., making something African) has been applied in various contexts, notably in geographic and personal naming and in the composition of the civil service via processes such as

indigenization Indigenization is the act of making something more indigenous; transformation of some service, idea, etc. to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more indigenous people in public administration, employment and other fields. The t ...

Africanization of names

Africanization has referred to the modification of place names and personal names to reflect an "African" identity. In some cases, changes are not only of transliteration but of the European name. In many cases during the colonial period, African placenames were

Anglicized Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

or Francized.

Place names

Country names

Various African countries have undergone name changes during the previous century as the result of consolidations and

secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

s, territories gaining

sovereignty Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate au ...

, and

regime change Regime change is the partly forcible or coercive replacement of one government regime with another. Regime change may replace all or part of the state's most critical leadership system, administrative apparatus, or bureaucracy. Regime change may ...

Other place names

*Fernando Po island changed to

Bioko Bioko (; ; ; historically known as Fernando Pó, ) is an island of Equatorial Guinea. It is located south of the coast of Cameroon, and northwest of the northernmost part of mainland Equatorial Guinea. Malabo, on the north coast of the is ...

Island *Léopoldville changed to

Kinshasa Kinshasa (; ; ), formerly named Léopoldville from 1881–1966 (), is the Capital city, capital and Cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kinshasa is one of the world's fastest-grow ...

*Salisbury changed to

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

*Lourenço Marques changed to

Maputo Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

*Nova Lisboa changed to

Huambo Huambo, formerly Nova Lisboa (English language, English: ''New Lisbon''), is the third-most populous List of cities and towns in Angola, city in Angola, after the capital city Luanda and Lubango, with a population of 595,304 in the city and a pop ...

*Fort Lamy changed to N'Djaména *Tananarive changed to

Antananarivo Antananarivo (Malagasy language, Malagasy: ; French language, French: ''Tananarive'', ), also known by its colonial shorthand form Tana (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Madagascar. The administrative area of the city, known ...

*Bathurst changed to

Banjul Banjul (, (US) and ), officially the City of Banjul, is the capital city of The Gambia. It is the centre of the eponymous administrative division which is home to an estimated 400,000 residents, making it The Gambia's largest and most densely ...

*Santa Isabel/Port Clarence changed to

Malabo Malabo ( , ; formerly ) is the capital of Equatorial Guinea in the province of Bioko Norte. It is located on the north coast of the island of Bioko (, and as ''Fernando Pó'' by the Europeans). In 2018, the city had a population of approxim ...

*Élisabethville changed to

Lubumbashi Lubumbashi ( , ; former ; former ) is the second-largest Cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located in the country's southeasternmost part, along the border with Zambia. The capital ...

*Stanleyville changed to

Kisangani Kisangani (), formerly Stanleyville (), is the capital of Tshopo, Tshopo Province, located on the Congo River in the eastern part of the central Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the country's fifth-most populous urban a ...

*Luluabourg changed to

Kananga Kananga, formerly known as Luluabourg or Luluaburg, is the capital Cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, city of the Kasai-Central, Kasai-Central Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was the capital of the former Kasaï ...

*Ponthierville changed to

Ubundu Ubundu, formerly known as Ponthierville or Ponthierstad, is a town located in the Tshopo Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is the administrative center of the territory of the same name. It is on the Lualaba River, or Upper Congo ...

*Novo Redondo changed to Sumbe *Moçâmedes changed to Namibe, but changed back to Moçâmedes in 2016 *Abercorn changed to Mbala *Broken Hill changed to

Kabwe Kabwe is the capital of the Zambian Central Province and the Kabwe District, with a population estimated at 288,598 at the 2022 census. Named Broken Hill until 1966, it was founded when lead and zinc deposits were discovered in 1902. Kabwe also ...

*Fort Jameson changed to Chipata *Hartley changed to Chegutu *Fort Victoria changed to

Masvingo Masvingo, known as Fort Victoria during the colonial period, is a city in southeastern Zimbabwe and the capital of Masvingo Province. The city lies close to Great Zimbabwe, the national monument from which the country takes its name and clos ...

*Many places whose names were of European origin in South Africa have undergone Africanization since 1994; see South African Geographical Names Council. *Port Elizabeth changed to

Gqeberha Gqeberha ( , ), formerly named Port Elizabeth, and colloquially referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipa ...

in 2021.

Personal names

*Joseph-Désiré Mobutu changed to

Mobutu Sese Seko Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga ( ; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997), often shortened to Mobutu Sese Seko or Mobutu and also known by his initials MSS, was a Congolese politician and military officer ...

*François Tombalbaye changed to N'Garta Tombalbaye *Étienne Eyadéma changed to Gnassingbé Eyadéma *

Francisco Macías Nguema Francisco Macías Nguema (born Mez-m Ngueme, later Africanisation, Africanised to Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong; 1 January 1924 – 29 September 1979), often referred to as Macías Nguema or simply Macías, was an Equatoguinean politician w ...

changed to Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong Sometimes, the name change can be used to reflect a change of faith, most prominently seen in the case of

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

. (See

Islamic name Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from Arabic-speaking and also non-Arab Muslim countries have not had given name, given, middle name, middle, and family names but rather a chain of names. This system ...

.)
Examples: *Albert-Bernard Bongo changed to

Omar Bongo Omar Bongo Ondimba (born Albert-Bernard Bongo; 30 December 1935 – 8 June 2009) was a Gabonese politician who was the second president of Gabon from 1967 until Death and state funeral of Omar Bongo, his death in 2009. A member of the Gabonese De ...

* Dawda Jawara changed to David Jawara in 1953 * Jean-Bédel Bokassa changed to Salah Eddine Ahmed Bokassa

Africanization of civil services

In some countries after following their independence, "Africanization" was the name given to

racial Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of va ...

policies and

affirmative action Affirmative action (also sometimes called reservations, alternative access, positive discrimination or positive action in various countries' laws and policies) refers to a set of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking ...

, which were intended to increase the number of indigenous Africans in the

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...

Localization in African languages

The term Africanization, abbreviated as the

numeronym A numeronym is a word, usually an abbreviation, composed partially or wholly of numerals. The term can be used to describe several different number-based constructs, but it most commonly refers to a contraction in which all letters between the fir ...

"A12n," has been applied to discussion of

internationalization and localization In computing, internationalization and localization (American English, American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English, British), often abbreviated i18n and l10n respectively, are means of adapting to different languages, regi ...

of software and content in

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

References

{{Cultural assimilation, sp=ize Culture of Africa Decolonization Cultural assimilation Geographical naming disputes Names of places in Africa Anti-Western sentiment Pan-Africanism Human names Toponymy