Portugal, the earliest European colonial power in Africa, was also the last. The four Portuguese colonies (since 1951 officially 'overseas provinces') of Angola, Mozambique, Guine (Bissau) and the Cape Verde Islands, and Sao Tome and Principe, attained independence later than the colonies of other European powers; 1974 and 1975, after a series of long and hard fought guerrilla wars.

Gen. Yoweri Museveni got special training in Guerilla warfare from Mozambique

Unlike France, Britain and Belgium, Portugal refused to decolonize until the middle of the 1970s. As an authoritarian society itself, Portugal could hardly accept freedom in the colonies which would inspire demands for freedom at home. Moreover economic arguments did not favour decolonization: independence for the colonies would deprive Portugal of its middleman role between the products of the colonies and powerful international firms. Portugal's economic weakness meant it could not look forward to the prospect of maintaining a powerful neo-colonial influence in the territories after independence. Furthermore, decolonization would destroy the myths which the Portuguese dictatorship propagated to legitimize its hold over both Portugal itself and the colonies - the myths of luso-tropicalism and the 'civilizing' mission of empire.