The British post offices in Africa were a system of post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

s set up by the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 to be used by its Middle East Forces and East Africa Forces in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 during and after World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

Middle East Forces

Definitive British stamps were overprint

Overprint

An overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics added to the face of a postage stamp or banknote after it has been printed. Post offices most often use overprints for internal administrative purposes such as accounting but they are also employed in public mail...

ed "M.E.F." beginning in 1942. They were available in Cyrenaica

Cyrenaica

Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca...

, Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

, Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, and Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, as well as in the Dodecanese

Dodecanese

The Dodecanese are a group of 12 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, of which 26 are inhabited. Τhis island group generally defines the eastern limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the Southern Sporades island group...

 islands in the Aegean. At the beginning of 1943, the color-changed definitives were also overprinted, and in 1947, the 5-shilling and 10-shilling stamps received the overprint. In 1950, the British government declared that the remaining overprinted stamps were valid for postage throughout the UK, and so many of the surviving stamps have British inland rather than foreign postmarks.

East Africa Forces

The East Africa Forces in Somalia also received British stamps, but overprinted "E.A.F." instead, beginning 15 January 1943.

Eritrea, Somalia & Tripolitania

From 1948 on, the military administrations in Eritrea, Somalia, and Tripolitania used their own overprints.

Sources

• Stanley Gibbons Ltd: various catalogues
• Encyclopaedia of Postal History
• Stuart Rossiter & John Flower: The Stamp Atlas
• Scott catalogue
  Scott catalogue
  The Scott catalogue of postage stamps, published by Scott Publishing Co, a subsidiary of Amos Press, is updated annually and lists all the stamps of the entire world which its editors recognize as issued for postal purposes. It is published in six large volumes and is also produced in...