One significant event that greatly influenced Africa’s historical trajectory was the Berlin Conference of 1884. This conference marked the beginning of the scramble to divide Africa among the major European powers, including the French, English, Germans, Portuguese, and Spanish. Following the Industrial Revolution, demand for raw materials increased significantly to support Europe’s economic growth. As a result, the African continent—rich in abundant and largely untapped natural resources—became increasingly attractive to European powers seeking to expand their territories and assert political dominance. The Berlin Conference effectively redefined Africa as a conceptual terra nullius, a term that dismissed native resistance by subordinating indigenous claims to sovereignty. This provided a practical ideology for colonial governance, facilitating the imposition of arbitrary territorial boundaries that served the interests of European powers. These divisions fragmented the continent into various countries and regions, often splitting similar ethnic and linguistic groups into tribes.