The West African Frontier Force

The West African Frontier Force was the largest colonial military formation in sub-Saharan Africa, and it was, by the standards of British colonial armies, remarkably effective. The force, which was raised in the four British West African colonies — Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia — fought in colonial campaigns in West Africa, in the German East African campaign, in the Cameroon campaign, and in the Burma theatre of the Second World War, where its divisions produced some of the most decorated African soldiers of the war. The WAFF was dissolved at independence, with the four colonial contingents becoming the nucleus of the national armed forces of Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia.

The Origins of the Force

The West African Frontier Force was established in 1898 by the amalgamation of existing colonial military units in the four British West African colonies. The force had a common officer pool, a single Inspector-General, and four separate colonial contingents, each under its own commander. The 1898 establishment date reflected the consolidation of British rule in West Africa after the conquest of the Ashanti kingdom (1896), the conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate (1903), and the resolution of the various frontier disputes.

The British model was the Indian Army, with a small British officer corps and large numbers of African other ranks. The force was financed from the revenues of the colonial governments, not by the Imperial Treasury — a structural fact that gave the colonial governors considerable control over how it was used. As the historian Charles Crozier has shown in his work on the West African military, the WAFF was a colonial force in the strict sense: it was paid for by the colonies it was meant to police.

The Force in the Colonial Era

The West African Frontier Force played important roles in the colonial era, particularly in the conquest and pacification of British West Africa. The Nigerian contingent was the largest, and it fought the prolonged campaigns against the Sokoto Caliphate, the campaigns in the Nigerian hinterland, and the operations on the Cameroonian border during the First World War. The Gold Coast contingent fought in the Anglo-Ashanti Wars, the last of which, in 1900, was a major engagement in which the British Residency at Kumasi was besieged by the Asante. The Sierra Leonean contingent operated on the frontier with Liberia, and the Gambian contingent was the smallest component.

The force was also involved in the suppression of internal disturbances, including the resistance of African communities to colonial rule. The 1915–1916 Satiru Revolt in northern Nigeria, in which the WAFF was deployed against the Mahdist uprisings, killed some 70 British and WAFF soldiers and required several months of operations. The force was, in this respect, the principal instrument of colonial rule.

The Force in the First World War

The West African Frontier Force made significant contributions to the British war effort in the First World War. The principal theatre was the East African campaign against the German colonial forces led by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, in which Nigerian and Gold Coast regiments fought alongside British, Indian, and South African troops. The force also fought the German colonial army in the Cameroon campaign of 1914–1916, in which the conquest of German Kamerun was completed in February 1916.

The West African regiments of the Gold Coast, the Gold Coast Regiment, and the Nigerian Regiment served with distinction. The German field commander, Lettow-Vorbeck, paid tribute to the West African troops in his memoirs: they were, he wrote, “first-rate fighters, not at all inferior to the Askaris.” The experience of the First World War was formative for African military officers and produced the first generation of African soldiers with modern military training. The Nigerian officer Ademola Adeshina, who would later command the Nigeria Regiment in the Second World War, served as a junior officer in the Cameroon campaign.

The Force in the Second World War

The West African Frontier Force, by then known as the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) and granted the “Royal” prefix in 1928, made even larger contributions to the British war effort in the Second World War. The principal theatre was the Burma campaign, in which the 81st (West African) Division and the 82nd (West African) Division fought the Imperial Japanese Army.

The 82nd Division, in particular, served with distinction in the Arakan and at Kohima, and the 81st Division saw action in East Africa. The West African divisions in Burma suffered more than 5,000 casualties, and they were the largest African military formations ever raised for overseas service. As Major General F. S. Tuker, the British commander in the Arakan, observed: “the West African soldier is a born fighting man; he has the tenacity of a badger and the courage of a lion.” It was, perhaps, the kind of tribute that soldiers of one army pay to those of another when they have fought together; but the West African soldiers in Burma were paying for it in blood.

The RWAFF also served in the British Somaliland campaign and in the occupation of Madagascar. The 1942 Somaliland campaign, in which the WAFF was forced to retreat before the Italian advance, was a humiliation that the force worked to expunge in the Burma campaign.

The Structure of the Force

The West African Frontier Force was organised into four colonial contingents, each with its own regimental structure. The Nigerian contingent was the largest, with the Nigeria Regiment and several other formations, and the Gold Coast contingent was the second largest, with the Gold Coast Regiment and supporting units. The Sierra Leonean and Gambian contingents were smaller, and they were typically attached to the larger formations for training and operations.

The force was commanded by an Inspector-General based in Accra, and the four colonial contingents were under the command of the local governors. The regimental structure was modelled on the British Indian Army, and the regimental traditions were often strong and durable. The regimental mottoes, the cap badges, and the customary forms of address all carried over from the colonial period into the post-independence armies.

The Officer Corps and Africanisation

The officer corps of the West African Frontier Force was initially almost entirely British, with the first African officers commissioned only in the early twentieth century. The British officers were mostly seconded from the British Army, and they were assisted by a small number of warrant officers and senior non-commissioned officers. The training of African officers was a slow process, and the first regular commissions were granted only in the interwar period.

The Africanisation of the officer corps accelerated after the Second World War, and by independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the officer corps was largely African. Major General Alexander Ogomudia, who became Chief of Defence Staff of Nigeria in 2003, was one of the West African officers who emerged from the post-war generation; his career traces the arc of the colonial force into the post-colonial army.

The Post-Independence Successors

The West African Frontier Force was dissolved at independence, with the four colonial contingents becoming the nucleus of the national armed forces. The Nigerian armed forces, the largest successor, inherited the equipment and the regimental traditions of the Nigeria Regiment. The Ghanaian armed forces, the second largest, inherited the Gold Coast Regiment. The Sierra Leonean and Gambian armed forces were smaller and less well equipped.

The post-independence armed forces of West Africa have had a complex history, marked by military coups and civil wars, but they have retained the regimental traditions and the training ethos of the West African Frontier Force. The legacy of the WAFF is one of the most significant colonial military inheritances in modern Africa.

Historiographical Note

The West African Frontier Force has, until recently, been neglected by historians. The older official histories, embodied in the work of H. M. T. James and H. A. Colwell, treated the force as a record of imperial service. The revisionist literature, led by Charles Crozier and the more recent work of Timothy Stapleton, has shown that the force was as much an instrument of colonial control as of imperial defence. The current debate, exemplified in the work of Ashley Jackson and the contributors to the Cambridge History of the British Army, is over how much the WAFF was a military success despite the colonial conditions of its service.

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