CIA Activities in Africa During the Cold War

Nov 07, 2025 0

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a long and complex history of involvement in Africa, particularly during the Cold War era. This involvement spanned from the agency's inception to the end of the Cold War and beyond. As more African nations gained independence from European colonial powers, the United States grew increasingly concerned with controlling African nuclear material, African public opinion, and African governments.

British scholar Susan Williams has spent years documenting these and other instances of the United States’ secret operations during the early years of African independence. Her book, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, is an investigation of CIA involvement in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In November 1959, the CIA created a dedicated Africa division. According to Susan Williams, the CIA's brief in Africa was to secure American power across the continent by any means imaginable.

Oversight and Management of Covert Operations

The oversight and management of covert operations often showcased the tension between the CIA and the legislative branch. Documents associated with the control and management of covert operations often showcase the tension between the CIA and the legislative branch.

In the United States, the National Security Council (NSC), or more specifically, of a NSC subcommittee became a function for the approval and management of these activities by organs of government beyond the CIA itself. This unit changed names over time, but it retained the same responsibilities - approval, monitoring and review. Effectively this NSC unit was the high command of the secret war. Unless a president chose to become involved personally, the interagency committee served as the ultimate authority for operations approval and review.

President John F. Kennedy inherited an existing apparatus for making covert operations decisions. Named after an Eisenhower directive, NSC 5412/2, the unit was known as the 5412 Group or the “Special Group.” The Special Group had the authority to approve, reject, and review all covert activities.

All the chief executives maintained a White House watchdog unit authorized to review intelligence operations, including covert operations. This was the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). At the highest level the president’s national security adviser worked closely with the DCI to track intelligence activities from a NSC perspective.

Covert operations proposals originated variously. Proposals that began within the CIA went through an internal approval process, usually originating in the DDP. The DDP presented pros and cons to the director’s office, and the DCI was responsible for dealings with the Special Group and its brethren. The DCI himself was a member of the Special Group.

Key Operations and Interventions

Ghana

Ghana's appeal to the agency was based on its place in history. As the first African nation to gain independence, in 1957, and the homeland of Kwame Nkrumah, the nation was inevitably a source of intrigue.In Nkrumah’s own country, the US government appears not to have pursued a course of outright assassination. But it acted in other ways to undermine the Ghanaian leader, often justifying its ploys with the same kinds of paternalistic rationalizations the British had used before them.

The coup d'etat, organized by dissident army officers, toppled the Nkrumah government on Feb. The Accra station was encouraged by headquarters to maintain contact with dissidents of the Ghanaian army for the purpose of gathering intelligence on their activities. It was given a generous budget, and maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched.

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On March 11, 1965, almost a year before the coup, William P. Mahoney, U.S. ambassador to Ghana, participated in a candid discussion in Washington, D.C., with CIA Director John A. McCone. Nevertheless, he confidently predicted that one way or another Nkrumah would be out within a year.

On May 27, 1965, Robert W. Komer advised, "FYI, we may have a pro-Western coup in Ghana soon." After it did, Komer, now acting special assistant for national security affairs, wrote a congratulatory assessment to the President on March 12, 1966. "The coup in Ghana," he crowed, "is another example of a fortuitous windfall. Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African.

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Congo

The Congo stepped out of its colonial shackles soon after Ghana, in 1960. Nkrumah possessed an acute understanding of the threat and of the people behind it. Lumumba’s assassination is remembered today as one of the low points of the early years of African independence, but a lacking documentary record has allowed partisan investigators to minimize the CIA’s role.

Only days after Lumumba’s visit to Ghana, Larry Devlin, the agency’s leading man in the Congo, warned his bosses of a vague takeover plot involving the Soviets, Ghanaians, Guineans, and the local communist party. The CIA’s agents did not, in the end, man the firing squad to kill Lumumba. But as Williams makes clear, that distinction is minor when one considers everything else the agency did to assist in the murder.

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After inventing and disseminating the bogus conspiracy plot of a pro-Soviet takeover, the CIA leveraged its multitude of sources in Katanga to provide intelligence to Lumumba’s enemies, making his capture possible. They helped to deliver him to the Katanga prison where he was held before his execution.

American spies and diplomats wrongly pegged Lumumba as a Soviet dupe. CIA intelligence worked against him from the moment he took office, ultimately conspiring to kill him. Meanwhile, the CIA funded opposition figures including Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the military officer who later became the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. It organized protests against him and planted newspaper articles that undermined popular support for his rule, Williams writes. Before long, the CIA was actively encouraging Congolese politicians to overthrow Lumumba.

Other Operations

Somalia: In 2003, the CIA began to covertly arm and finance Somali warlords opposed to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Alongside funding proxy wars in Somalia, the CIA has also financed a secret prison in Mogadishu.
South Africa: Former CIA agent and US diplomat Donald Rickard has claimed that the CIA helped arrest Nelson Mandela by informing South African police of his location in 1962.
Angola: Actions to halt Cuban activities in Africa, in countries such as Angola.
Nicaragua: Programs to arm the Contras in Nicaragua.
Libya: The actions the Reagan administration took against Libya.

Throughout the 1980s, the CIA supported dictator of Chad Hissène Habré as a counter to dictator of Libya Muammar Gaddafi. During the War on Terror, the CIA and British MI6 cooperated with the Gaddafi regime. This included renditions of Libyan dissidents back to Gaddafi's regime, where they were often tortured.

CIA Influence on Elections

The CIA has been alleged to have influenced the 1967 elections by financing Prime Minister Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal and other pro-western leaders. The CIA armed the Contras against the Sandinista government in the aftermath of the Nicaraguan Revolution from 1981 to 1990.

Cultural Influence

CIA operations were not confined to plots ending in brute force. This included stipends to South African writers in exile, as well as the sponsoring of cultural festivals and conferences in Africa.

In a spectacular disclosure Williams presents details of CIA-funded concerts by Louis Armstrong, touring 27 African cities in 11 weeks during late 1960. This included a concert in Elisabethville, the Katanga breakaway province of Congo, at a time when Lumumba’s end was near.

Plausible Deniability

The CIA and other spy agencies have used plausible deniability, in particular, to insulate presidents from charges they had had a hand in, or had even approved, covert operations. But maintaining this fiction put a special premium on the approval and management of these activities by organs of government beyond the CIA itself.