It depended on the region and specific movements in question, and it often varied. I'll give some examples in areas I'm more familiar with.

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In Angola, for example, the FNLA and UNITA were Chinese clients, and Jonas Savimbi was even a Maoist during the pre-independence years. However, when Angola suddenly became independent in 1975 and UNITA and the FNLA found themselves up against the Soviet and Cuban-backed MPLA, we see their communist and Maoist leanings wane as Zaire, the US, and South Africa all show willingness to support their efforts to oust the MPLA from Luanda. Savimbi would go on to be an anticommunist through the rest of his life, and both UNITA and FNLA remain right-leaning parties opposed to MPLA in the Angolan government today. Outside of UNITA and FNLA, however, the prominent Portuguese colonial liberation movements were very "genuine" in their communist leanings. PAIGC in Guinea, MPLA in Angola, and FRELIMO in Mozambique all had prominent members of their leadership that were Marxist intellectuals. In these groups, you'll notice that, while they toned down their left-wing politics after the fall of the Soviet Union, they remain left-wing parties.

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In the Horn of Africa, there were cases of both Communism-of-Convenience and "legitimate" ideological Communism. Prior to 1978, Somalia was nominally left-leaning, leveraging Soviet support to bolster its army and sponsor irrendentist terrorist movements in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya. However, when they finally went to war with an increasingly left-leaning Ethiopia in 1977, the Soviets were less than enthusiastic about supporting Somalia's invasion and cut off aid. In response, Somalia ejected the Soviets from the country (including the naval base they had just finished in Berbera) and made attempts to buddy up with anti-Soviet powers, including the US, China, and several middle eastern states. On the other end of the spectrum, Ethiopia's 1974 revolution was the result of a steady increase in left-wing sentiment caused by the conservative imperial government's attempts to modernize the country with western-style universities and foreign-educated officers, and when the revolution finally broke out and fell into chaos, we'd see ideologically left-wing movements on all sides. The Derg regime that took power received Soviet and Cuban support and implemented various communist policies, including collectivization of farms. Opposing them, the TPLF was a Marxist-Leninist organization that, like its Eritrean allies to the north, were very heavily ideologically driven, with forms of indoctrination and spreading of revolutionary propaganda reminiscent of the communists in the Russian and Chinese civil wars. The EPLF in Eritrea even overshadowed the non-communist ELF that they formed as a breakaway group from, and they retained their Marxist-Leninist doctrine even while receiving support from nominally anticommunist states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. As the Ethiopian Civil War reached its climax, the Ethiopian rebels came together under the flag of the left-leaning EPRDF, and, while the fall of the Soviet Union would cause the victorious group to tone down its beliefs, the EPRDF coalition remains left-leaning to this day.