two were clear British victories. French pretensions in West Africa were much more ambitious, and involved not just trade, but rebuilding the French Empire and bringing new populations into the umbrella of French civilization and Catholicism. There were dreams of consolidating a vast African empire by expanding south from the Mediterranean into the Sahara desert, moving east toward the Nile River, and moving south toward King Leopold's Congo. Post-colonial period Following World War II, campaigns for independence sprang up across West Africa, most notably in Ghana under the Pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972). Ghana became the first country of Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence in 1957, followed by Guinea under the guidance of Sekou Touré the next year. After a decade of protests, riots, and clashes, French West Africa voted for autonomy in a 1958 referendum, dividing into the states of today. Most of the British colonies gained autonomy the following decade. Out of the 17 nations that achieved their independence in 1960, the Year of Africa, nine were West African countries. Many founding fathers of West African nations, like Nkrumah, Touré, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Modibo Keïta, Sylvanus Olympio, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Siaka Stevens, and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, consolidated their power during the post-independence 1960s by gradually eroding democratic institutions and civil society. In 1973, Guinea-Bissau proclaimed its independence from Portugal, and was internationally recognised following the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal. West African political history since independence has been characterised by African socialism. Senghor, Nkrumah, and Touré all embraced the idea of African socialism, whereas Houphouët-Boigny and Liberia's William Tubman remained suspicious of it. 1983 saw the rise of socialist Thomas Sankara, often titled the "Che Guevara of Africa", to power in Burkina Faso. Since independence, West Africa has suffered from the same problems as much of the African continent, particularly dictatorships, political corruption, and military coups. At the time of his death in 2005, for example, Togo's Étienne Eyadéma was among the world's longest-ruling dictators. Inter-country conflicts have been few, with Mali and Burkina Faso's nearly bloodless Agacher Strip War being a rare exception. Civil wars The region of West Africa has seen a number of civil wars in its recent past, including the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), two civil wars in Liberia (1989–1997 and 1999–2003), a decade of fighting in Sierra Leone (1991–2002), the Guinea-Bissau Civil War (1998–1999), and two recent conflicts in Côte d'Ivoire (2002–2007 and 2010–2011). Nigerian