The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was a meeting of European powers that formally initiated the "Scramble for Africa," but its true purpose was never about the welfare of African people.

Instead, it was a geopolitical and economic power grab aimed at preventing conflict among European nations as they raced to exploit the continent's immense wealth of raw materials and secure new markets.

A Boardroom, Not a Battlefield

Before the conference, European nations had already established a small presence in Africa, primarily along the coast. However, the rise of industrialization in Europe created an insatiable demand for raw materials like rubber, palm oil, ivory, minerals, and diamonds. This led to a frantic and often uncoordinated rush to claim territory, threatening to ignite an inter-European war. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, recognizing the danger, convened a conference in Berlin to set the ground rules for the partition of Africa, ensuring a "civilized" and orderly division of the continent.

The conference brought together representatives from 14 nations, including major players like Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal. Noticeably absent were any African representatives. The continent’s existing kingdoms, cultures, and political structures were completely disregarded. The 38 articles of the General Act of Berlin established a legal framework for colonization, with a central principle known as "effective occupation." This meant a European power could no longer simply claim a territory; they had to demonstrate that they had a physical presence, with a flag, administration, and police force on the ground. This rule, far from protecting Africans, accelerated the scramble, as it forced European powers to rapidly expand their control into the interior to solidify their claims.

The Economy of Exploitation

The primary motivation for the conference was purely economic. Africa was not seen as a collection of diverse nations, but as an untapped treasure trove of resources and a potential market for manufactured goods. The conference, in effect, legalized the large-scale theft of Africa’s natural wealth.

• King Leopold II of Belgium provides one of the most brutal examples. The conference recognized his personal ownership of a massive region, the Congo Free State, which he promised to rule as a humanitarian project. In reality, it was a slave state dedicated to the extraction of rubber and ivory. The profits from this brutal exploitation, achieved through forced labor and mutilation, built Leopold's wealth and funded lavish public works in Belgium, while the Congolese people suffered a humanitarian catastrophe.

• The conference also laid the groundwork for the exploitation of mineral wealth. The discovery of gold and diamonds in Southern Africa ignited a frenzied rush, and the territories were carved up to grant European companies control over these valuable resources. The British, for instance, secured vast tracts of land that were rich in gold and other minerals, which would be essential to funding the British Empire.

The economic motivations behind the conference were not subtle. The General Act itself declared that the Congo and Niger River basins were to be "free trade" zones, a provision that was designed to ensure that no single European power could monopolize the economic exploitation of the region's main arteries. This "free trade" was not for the benefit of Africans, but for the unimpeded access of European corporations.

Disregarding People for Straight Lines on a Map

One of the most enduring and damaging consequences of the Berlin Conference was the creation of arbitrary colonial borders. European diplomats, with limited knowledge of African geography, drew straight lines on maps that had no connection to the ethnic, linguistic, or cultural realities on the ground.

• Splitting ethnic groups: The Somali people, a largely unified ethnic group, were divided among French Somaliland, British Somaliland, Italian Somaliland, and a part of Ethiopia. This has fueled irredentist conflicts for decades, as seen in the Ogaden War and ongoing instability in the Horn of Africa.

• Forcing rival groups together: In other cases, the borders forced traditionally rival groups to live together within the same colonial state. The creation of Nigeria, for example, combined over 250 distinct ethnic groups, including the three dominant ones—the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo—into a single country. This artificial unity has led to persistent political instability and, in the 1960s, a devastating civil war.

These artificial borders continue to fuel conflicts and political instability today. African nations, upon gaining independence, largely chose to maintain these borders, fearing that redrawing them would lead to further chaos and endless internal wars. As former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere famously stated, "We have artificial 'nations' carved out at the Berlin Conference in 1884, and today we are struggling to build these nations into stable units of human society."

The Lasting Legacy

The Berlin Conference did not just draw lines on a map; it created a framework for an extractive economic system that continues to define Africa's relationship with the West. The infrastructure built during the colonial period—railways, ports, and roads—was designed to move raw materials from the interior to the coast, not to facilitate intra-African trade or to promote internal economic development. This has left many African nations with economies that are heavily dependent on the export of a few raw materials, making them vulnerable to global market fluctuations.

The conference, and the subsequent "Scramble for Africa," institutionalized the view of Africa as a reservoir of resources for the rest of the world. It is a history that is often sanitized or ignored in mainstream education, which tends to focus on the "heroic" explorers and missionaries rather than the brutal economic reality of what they were enabling. The legacy of the Berlin Conference is a powerful reminder that the modern map of Africa, and many of its persistent challenges, were not created by its people, but by a handful of European men in a room, motivated not by a civilizing mission, but by a quest for profit.