The Scramble for Africa describes the competition between European imperial powers to first control trade and then territory in Africa in the final two decades of the 19th century. The reasons these powers were interested in Africa included its resources like ivory, gold, and palm oil, control of trade routes, and the prestige of possessing a global empire. Additional motivations included the desire to spread Christianity and what Europeans called 'civilisation.' The dominant powers in the scramble were Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and Italy.

The result of the Scramble for Africa was a continent partitioned on the map by a cartographer's ruler, but with a physical reality of damaging divisions between local peoples and traditional trade networks. Natural resources and indigenous peoples were ruthlessly exploited for profit. By the early 20th century, only two African states were free from some sort of European control.

Palm oil, ivory, rubber, groundnuts, and gold were just some of Africa's resources that European states coveted. Africa had long been a source of slaves, but this particular trade was being replaced by others by the second half of the 19th century. Diamonds were added to the list of riches after their discovery at Kimberly in Southern Africa in 1867. Massive, world-changing gold deposits would be discovered at Witwatersrand, also in Southern Africa, in 1886. The discoveries of gold and diamonds would inspire more prospectors and colonists to try their luck all over Africa, everyone hoping to find equal treasure but more often than not being disappointed.

Access to Africa's natural resources and its peoples as a source of slaves had traditionally been restricted to coastal areas and African middlemen who traded with the interior. This changed with developments in medicine, like quinine, which prevented some of the African diseases that so badly affected the Europeans. A second development that opened up Africa's interior was the discovery and mapping of helpful waterways like the Congo, Zambezi, and Niger rivers. The long and exhausting search for the source of the Nile, finally confirmed in the 1860s as Lake Victoria, was another plus for traders, missionaries, and would-be colonists. Now steamboats could transport goods much faster and much more cost-effectively to the coast, where they could be shipped to other continents. Such developments also meant new markets opened up to traders where they might sell goods imported into Africa, usually from other corners of European empires.

All of the above developments came at just the right time for many European economies, as explained by The Cambridge Encyclopedia of History:

The 'Great Depression' of the international capitalist economy during the last three decades of the 19th century made prices and profits unstable; merchants trading in Africa warned their governments that their future prosperity might depend on developing new African outlets for exports and investment.

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As competition heated up between the European powers to grab Africa's resources and control its great rivers, it was recognised that some rules of conquest should be established to avoid empires stepping on each others' toes and potentially causing a war between them that could spill over onto the European continent. This was particularly true for the three main rivals: Britain, France, and Germany. The result of this concern was the Berlin Conference 1884 to 5. Of particular interest to the main delegates was the question of who would control Central Africa and the continent's larger rivers. It is significant of attitudes at the time that no representatives from any African states were invited to Berlin.

The conference, although it did not actually divide the continent, provided a framework by which Africa could, in the near future, be partitioned into European areas of effective control and so is widely considered the beginning of a distinct acceleration in the scramble that was, strictly speaking, already underway. What the Berlin agreements did, besides establishing that the major rivers should be accessible to everyone, was to establish that "the claims of a European government to a particular region would only be recognized if the European power in question was already effectively in control of that region" (Reid, 153). This was a far from clear definition of colonial rights as the imperialist powers saw them. Further, what exactly constituted effective control or occupation was much debated.

Effectively, the vague phrasing and informality of the agreements made in Berlin that all of Africa was now up for grabs only meant imperialist powers were now obliged to actually have a presence in an area of Africa, rather than merely point their diplomatic finger at it on a map and say, "that bit is mine." This consequence contains some irony since the leaders who convened in Berlin had hoped merely to control present colonial activity in Africa, call into question rather vague historical claims (particularly by Portugal), and limit future activity to trade, but they had, as time would tell, only succeeded in accelerating, widening, and deepening the process of territorial acquisition. European powers were now all too keen to demonstrate 'effective occupation' by whatever means necessary and, in some cases, were keen to take a slice of the continent simply to prevent a European rival from doing so. When claims were clear, treaties were signed between European powers, often mutually recognising claims in a sort of “you take that slice and we'll have this slice” arrangement.

Colonisation first took the form of trading stations (aka factories) which controlled or even monopolised the regional trade in certain goods, especially when the stations were owned by a single private trading company. At the same time, very often missionaries established missions, hospitals, and schools when permitted to do so by local chiefs. When it became clear a region had lucrative resources, European governments began to take a more direct interest, funding such projects as roads, bridges, railways, and telegraph systems to aid commerce and control.

A consequence of state investment was often a need to militarily protect such assets, and so armies were sent to Africa, and local militia and police forces formed. Wars might follow where local peoples disputed this takeover of land and resources, but few African nations could compete with modern European weapons like rifles, machine guns, and artillery. The strength of the European economies meant they could afford to fight unprofitable wars to secure future resource gains. The two most powerful players in the game, Britain and France, also possessed large navies with which they could resupply and support their land armies.

As European settler communities grew, so local political institutions developed (which typically excluded Africans). Finally, the status of colony might be granted to a region by a European government, or, if the region was also coveted or strategically important to other European powers, a less controlling protectorate status was awarded (an example being Egypt with its control of the Suez Canal).

African powers were not entirely passive in the Scramble for Africa, since many local rulers had been and in the future would continue to be all too willing to favour one imperialist power in order to keep another one out or to use foreign military and trade connections to bolster their own positions of power against local rivals. Those leaders who decided to fight outright European colonisers, sooner or later, ended up losing their state or having it absorbed into a colony. Nevertheless, rebellions did occasionally break out against colonial rule – the Mahdist War in Sudan and Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya being notable examples – and underground activists continued to work and recruit so that one day popular movements could be formed that were capable of replacing colonial governments.

In the scramble, colonies were created entirely with European interests in mind. A consequence of this attitude was that straight-line borders were created, which very often completely ignored not only the challenges of local geography but also the traditional territorial rights of indigenous peoples, common languages, and deeply rooted cultures. Other consequences included a heavy environmental impact, such as deforestation, and the eradication in some areas of certain animals, such as elephants, killed in their tens of thousands each year for their ivory tusks.

European leaders, traders, and colonists very often convinced themselves that the colonisation of Africa was not all about money. Various other motivations were bandied about; some earnestly believed in, while others were mere veneers to mask unscrupulous exploitation. Spreading religion to save souls, eradicating the slave trade, making scientific discoveries (particularly in the fields of geography, biology, and anthropology) that would benefit humanity, eradicating diseases blighting the lives of Africans, and sharing the benefits of the Industrial Revolution were some of these motivations.

The delegations at the Berlin Conference had given some consideration to the well-being of Africans, promising to preserve native tribes and improve their living conditions and material well-being. Largely, these were empty promises, but they do indicate some explanation of why European leaders felt they had every right to intervene in Africa without consulting Africans, an attitude difficult to comprehend today. Statesmen believed their industrialised economies gave them the power and, therefore, the right to intervene. This was seen and explained as a sort of Social Darwinism, that more 'evolved' nations had a right to interfere in 'backward' nations. In addition, many Europeans also felt a moral superiority and obligation to act since they perceived themselves as superior agents who could (to use their words) 'improve' and 'civilise' African peoples they considered 'primitive' and 'savage.'

As the historian M. E. Chamberlain points out, a widely held view amongst the populations of Europe in the 19th century, quite alien to our modern view, was that:

It was both proper and inevitable that the more advanced would conquer and rule the less advanced. In the end it would be to the advantage of both. But above all it was inescapable….this gave them both a comforting reassurance that they were on the winning side and a kind of absolution for any dubious acts they might commit in fulfilling an inevitable and ultimately benevolent destiny.

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The European attitude and its racist vocabulary were reinforced and repeated by contemporary European historians and scholars who erroneously regarded Africa's long history as being completely empty of anything noteworthy, and by religious institutions and leaders convinced that their duty was to spread the message of Christianity and sweep away competing indigenous religions and cultures. All of these attitudes are encapsulated in the ideals of what was popularly called the '3 Cs' of imperialism: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization. These attitudes were also widely held across European nations amongst people of all classes as the purpose, benefits, and pride of empire were extolled in literature (including children's), theatre, music, advertising, and educational material.

Following the Scramble for Africa, the key European powers controlled the following major colonies/protectorates:

By the early 20th century, then, only Liberia and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) remained independent states in Africa. In just a couple of decades, over 100 million Africans found themselves under European rule. Then, as European powers faced the challenges of two world wars in the 20th century and African national movements began to become more effective, the struggle to hold on to colonies began. Gradually, through the latter half of the 20th century, African states did gain their independence. As Africa attempted to recover from decades of rampant exploitation and to overcome the problems caused by whimsical frontiers that had artificially divided communities, ordinary people once again suffered and continue to suffer today social, economic, and political upheavals, which have all too often resulted in civil wars, dictatorships, and humanitarian crises.