How do the personal networks of political elites influence their political career and survival? While existing social science research emphasizes the importance of social networks for collective action, there is a dearth of studies that systematically analyze the impact of personal networks on individual-level political outcomes across countries. Leveraging original data on the pre-independence political elite of 24 African countries, collected through a semi-automated coding of encyclopedic sources, my paper analyzes the effect of individual elites’ integration in their countries’ pre-independence political networks on two key post-independence outcomes: government inclusion and political persecution. My data include over 1,000 elite individuals who were politically active before independence, with detailed information on their political careers during colonial rule and after independence. In terms of individuals’ network integration, I distinguish between their network centrality and the ethnic diversity of their connections. Drawing on theories of social capital in multiethnic societies, I argue that network centrality is key to explain individuals’ inclusion in government. However, when it comes to political persecution, the ethnic diversity of networks is more relevant. Individuals with more diverse personal networks enjoy higher protection against persecution, such as imprisonment or assassination. The empirical results largely support my argument. Controlling for individuals’ career during colonial rule and their geographic origin, I find that i) more centrally positioned individuals were more likely to become included in government after independence, and ii) the higher individuals’ share of trans-ethnic connections in the pre-independence network, the lower their risk of suffering political persecution after independence.