What was scramble for africa

As the second-largest arms exporter in the world after the US, it sells billions of dollars in weapons annually across the continent. During his latest visit, Lavrov signed a defence cooperation agreement with Mozambique.

As a result of the sanctions that have been imposed on it by the US and Europe, Russia is now looking for new markets and seeking to make Africa one of its main export centres. All in all, Russia views Africa as a major trade opportunity and hopes to extend its influence in the continent rapidly.

Since then, cooperation forums have been held every three years, and the next forum is scheduled to convene in Beijing later this year. Furthermore, Chinese programs have an adverse impact on the environment. It should swiftly implement robust institutional reforms and start acting as the decisive power on the continent.

Also, in order to resist any detrimental foreign interference and preserve their independence, dignity, and sovereignty, African states should work towards ending their financial dependency on the West and other international players. It is natural and vital that Africans engage with the world directly.

The US, Russia and China — and any other foreign power — should only be allowed to operate in Africa as long as their actions are also beneficial for the continent. British and French colonial officials actively discouraged Christian mission work in Muslim areas. Lastly, the public education system of African was also changed.

The majority of colonial governments did little to support schools. Most formal schooling African colonies were a result of the work of missionaries. Missionaries felt that education and schools were essential to their mission. Their primary concern was the conversion of people to Christianity. Missionaries believed that the ability of African peoples to read the Bible in their own language was important to the conversion process. However, most mission societies were not wealthy, and they could not support the number of schools that they really wanted.

Consequently, with limited government support, most African children did not go to school during the colonial era. In fact at the end of colonial rule, no colony could state that more than half of their children finished elementary school, and far fewer attended secondary school. West Africans developed an extensive self-contained trading system, based on skilled manufacture. From the 8th century Muslim traders, from North Africa and Arab countries, began to reach the region.

Gradually, communities began to convert to Islam. By the end of the 11th century some entire states, and influential individuals in others, were Muslim. At the same time, West African trade slowly expanded towards Egypt and possibly India.

Arabic texts mention that from the late 8th century Ghana was considered 'the land of gold'. Mali also possessed great wealth. In , when Mansa Musa, its emperor, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, he took so much gold with him that in Egypt, which he also visited, the value of the metal was debased.

Prior to the European voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century, African rulers and merchants had established trade links with the Mediterranean world, western Asia, and the Indian Ocean region.

Within the continent itself, local exchanges among adjacent peoples fit into a greater framework of long-range trade. The Ashanti kingdom, or Asante, dominated much of the present-day state of Ghana. Gold Coast began encountering European traders in the mids, when the Portuguese began trading with coastal peoples.

By the seventeenth century, many European trading giants including the British, Dutch and French began building fortifications along the coastline in order to assert their positions. These interactions were to have a profound effect on African coastal settlements and African institutions came under considerable European influence very early on.

West Africa had a long history of connection to trans-Saharan gold trade, and from the 15th century was drawn into trade with Europe, in gold and increasingly in slaves. The Ashanti kingdom had emerged from the mid- 17th century, benefitting from access both to rich agricultural resources and gold, much of the labour for production of which was provided by a domestic slave trade. The Expansion of the Asante Kingdom, Image source. Many parts of West Africa was still unknown to the rest of the world, thus By the late 15th century and early 16th century many European nations like Portugal started to send the missionaries and explorers to investigate various parts of Africa and West Africa in particular.

As early as in the 19th century European powers like France, Germany, and Britain likewise sent number of missionaries, explorers, traders and philanthropists in West Africa. When the Ashanti kingdom showed ambitions to expand its control southwards in negotiating treaties with African authorities and protecting trading interests, the British invaded Ashanti in and burnt its capital.

The majority of European Explorers spent their time to investigate and to detail the interior and coast of West Africa to help European powers that were searching areas with potential materials as European countries were experiencing mushrooming of industries.

Explores assisted the European merchant groups; penetration of west Africa interior in 18th century was real a hard and difficult but with the aid of explorers, European merchant groups had advantage of trading in West Africa freely with assurance of security of themselves and their trading commodities. As Britain increasingly colonised more and more African countries, the British had become the dominant power along the coast, and they began annexing and laying claim to territory gradually.

The expansion of the Asante kingdom towards the coast was the major cause of this, as the British began to fear that the Asante would come to monopolise coastal trade in their place. The British placed the Governor of neighbouring Sierra Leone, which was already annexed, in charge of British forts and settlements along the coast. He formed an unfavourable opinion of the Asante, and began the long process of attempting to bring them under British control.

However, disputes over jurisdiction of the area known as Ashanti led to war between the British and the Asante, and in , the Asante succeeded in killing the Governor as well as seven of his men. In retaliation, the British with the help of tribes oppressed by the Asante, including the Fante and the Ga beat the Asante back in , and successfully ended their dominance of coastal regions.

The establishment of British law and jurisdiction in the colony was a gradual process, but the Bond with the Fante is popularly considered to be its true beginning. This recognised the power of British officials and British common law in the Gold Coast and over the Fante people. A supreme court was established in , and led to British common law becoming enforced.

However, all of this brought financial challenges, and saw the policy of making the colonies pay come in to force in the Gold Coast for the first time. European troops entering Kumane during the second Anglo- Ashanti War. The British fought against the Ashanti four times in the 19th century and suppressed a final uprising in before claiming the region as a colony.

It ended with a standoff after the British beat an Ashanti army near the coast in After two generations of relative peace, more violence occurred in when the Ashanti invaded the British "protectorate" along the coast in retaliation for the refusal of Fanti leaders to return a fugitive slave.

The result was another stand-off, but the British took casualties and public opinion at home started to view the Gold Coast as a quagmire. In , the Second Ashanti War began after the British took possession of the remaining Dutch trading posts along the coast, giving British firms a regional monopoly on the trade between Africans and Europe. The Ashanti had long viewed the Dutch as allies, so they invaded the British protectorate along the coast.

A British army led by General Wolseley waged a successful campaign against the Ashanti that led to a brief occupation of Kumasi and a "treaty of protection" signed by the Ashantehene leader of Ashanti, ending the war in July This war was covered by a number of news correspondents including H. Stanley and the "victory" excited the imagination of the European public. Africa: Altered states, ordinary miracles. London : Portobello Books.

Easterly, W. The European origins of economic development. NBER Working paper Esteban, J. Mayoral, and D. Ethnicity and conflict: An empirical study. American Economic Review 4 : — Gennaioli, N. Precolonial centralization and institutional quality in Africa. In Institutions and norms in economic development , ed. Gradstein and K. Konrad, 21— Cambridge: MIT Press.

The modern impact of precolonial centralization in Africa. Journal of Economic Growth 12 3 : — Herbst, J. States and power in africa. Horowitz, D. Ethnic groups in conflict. Huber, J.

Inequality, ethnicity and civil conflict. Huillery, E. History matters: The long-term impact of colonial public investments in French West Africa. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1 2 : — Landes, D. The wealth and poverty of nations: Why some are so rich and some so poor. New York: WW Norton. Michalopoulos, S. He is disgusted by the greed and brutality of the ivory traders in Africa. The picture above is a steamboat from Henry Stanley 's journey up the Congo river to find a real colonial administrator twenty years earlier.

Click on the picture to see more. In King Leopold was forced to hand the country over to the Belgian state because his administrators had run it badly. It was renamed the Belgian Congo. Christian missionaries who set up schools were some of the only people who tried to aid the region. This is an extract from a letter written in It is from a woman who was probably a missionary in the Congo region to a Fellow of St John's College who was involved in organising missions to the Congo. She has been travelling in Africa.

How does she view the African people? People were starting to acknowledge the human cost of colonialism, but did not know how to the put the problems right. Tim Butcher's book about his journey in Henry Stanley 's footsteps, Blood River , shows that the Democratic Republic of Congo is still a troubled country.