French West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea (now Guinea), Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger. The federation was formed of individual coastal colonies the French had first seized as trading posts in the 17th and 18th centuries.
As the French pursued their part in the Scramble for Africa in the 1880s and 1890s, they conquered large inland areas, and at first ruled them as either a part of the Senegal colony, or as independent entities. These conquered areas were usually governed by French Army officers, and dubbed Military Territories. In the late 1890s, the French government began to rein-in the territorial expansion of its officers on the ground, and transferred all the territories west of Gabon to a single Governor based in Senegal, reporting directly to the Minister of Overseas Affairs. The first Governor General of Senegal was named in 1895, and in 1904, the territories he oversaw were formally named French West Africa (AOF). Gabon would later become the seat of its own federation French Equatorial Africa (AEF), which was to border its western neighbor on the modern boundary between Niger and Chad.
Military Territories.
officers on the ground
Following World War II, the French Fourth Republic began a process of extending limited political rights in its colonies. In 1946, the loi Lamine Guèye granted some limited citizenship rights to natives of the African colonies. The 1956 Loi Cadre created popularly elected Territorial assemblies with only consultative powers. The French Empire was renamed the French Union. The Constitution of the French Fifth Republic of 1958 again changed the structure of the colonies from the French Union to the French Community. Each territory was to become a Protectorate with the consultative assembly named a National Assembly. The Governor appointed by the French was renamed the High Commissioner, and made head of state of each territory. The Assembly would name an African as Head of Government with advisory powers to the Head of State.
Protectorate
High Commissioner,
Legally, the federation ceased to exist after the September, 1958 referendum to approve this French Community. All the colonies except for Guinea voted to remain in the new structure. Guineans voted overwhelmingly for independence. In 1960, a further revision of the French constitution, compelled by the failure of the French Indochina War and the tensions in Algeria, allowed members of the French Community to unilaterally change their own constitutions. The new nations of West Africa were born. Senegal and former French Sudan became the Mali Federation (1960-61), while Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey subsequently formed the short-lived Sahel-Benin Union, later the Conseil de l'Entente.