At the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, the United States and the then Soviet Union poured money into Africa in their competition for influence.

Politician Johnstone Macau says Kenyans were excited at the fall of the wall

For ideological reasons each backed a string of countries directly or indirectly and helped rebels trying to overthrow the other's allies.

When the Cold War ended, commentators predicted a new dawn for Africa, with countries now free to determine their own destiny - a second liberation after the end of colonial rule.

But it has not worked out quite like that, although much has changed.

The most dramatic upset occurred in Ethiopia, where the loss of Soviet support led to the collapse of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime in 1991. He was overthrown by a rebel alliance committed to more regional autonomy, which promptly granted independence to the province of Eritrea.

But in May last year, a minor territorial dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea unexpectedly erupted into a full-scale war.

President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, another of Africa's more notorious dictators and once a key Western ally, also fell victim to the new era.

The West simply watched as he was overthrown by a rebel alliance in 1997. This was briefly hailed as a shining example of Africans solving African problems - until the former allies fell out, plunging the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo into a civil war which has sucked in almost all its neighbours.

President Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila, found himself at war with rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda - the very neighbours who had helped him to power.

Changes in the south

At the same time, the discrediting of Soviet-style communism certainly hastened the peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, because the ruling white minority felt it had less to fear.

And the South African-backed Mozambican rebels, Renamo, guessing what was to come, signed a peace accord with the government in 1992 which led to multi-party elections two years later.

In Angola, the Soviet Union and Cuba had backed Angola's Marxist government against the Unita rebels, who were supported by South Africa, Zaire and the United States during the 1980s.

As the Soviet Union began scaling down its overseas commitments, Cuba, a key Soviet ally, agreed in 1988 to pull its troops out of Angola in exchange for a South African withdrawal.

Cuba also demanded that South Africa grant independence to Namibia, which duly came in 1990.

The withdrawal of outsiders from Angola paved the way for multi-party elections in 1992, which should have led Angola into a prosperous future. But Unita lost the vote and resumed the civil war, which it finances by selling diamonds.

In Angola, what began as a Cold War conflict has taken on a momentum of its own.

Click here to see BBC's News Online's Talking Point on the fall of communism