Some Africans have fond memories of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest serving monarch, who came to smile and wave at crowds in 20 countries across the continent during her 70-year reign.
Others however recalled things like Britain's brutal 1950s crushing of Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion as the sun set on Britain's empire, and a huge diamond the queen's family acquired from colonial South Africa in 1905, which she never returned despite calls to do so.
Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo, whose country the queen visited in 1961, four years after it became one of the first African countries to get independence, lowered flags and said Ghana was proud to be part of the Commonwealth of nations.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose first name means freedom in Swahili and whose country gained independence in 1963, called her "a towering icon of selfless service."
Rwandan President Paul Kagame condoled the queen's passing and said "the modern Commonwealth is her legacy."
Kagame's government also announced that the country's flag and the flag of the East African Community bloc would be flown at half-mast until the conclusion of the queen's state funeral.
The British government this year struck a much-criticised deal to deport asylum-seekers from the UK to Rwanda, with Charles -- now king and the head of the Commonwealth -- reportedly opposed to the scheme.
But many were less enthusiastic about celebrating the life of a monarch whose country has a checkered history in Africa.
Some Nigerians recalled Britain's support in the 1960s for a military dictatorship that crushed the Biafra rebellion in the east of the country. Igbo officers launched the rebellion in 1967, triggering a three-year civil war that killed more than 1 million people, mostly from famine.
Uju Anya, an Igbo professor and survivor of that war who is now living in the United States, sparked controversy when she wrote on Twitter late on Thursday of her "disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome".
"We do not mourn the death of Elizabeth," South Africa's Marxist opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, said.
"Our interaction with Britain has been one of pain, death and dispossession, and of the dehumanization of the African people," it said, listing atrocities committed by British forces in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Despite this view of her, Elizabeth forged a close relationship with late South African leader Nelson Mandela, the first post-apartheid president, and visited South Africa twice after the end of white minority rule.
Elizabeth was just 25 and on a visit to Kenya with her husband Philip when she learned of her father King George VI's death and her accession to the throne on Feb. 6, 1952.
Meanwhile, the accession of King Charles to the throne has stirred renewed calls from politicians and activists for former colonies in the Caribbean to remove the monarch as their head of state and for Britain to pay slavery reparations