For example, many Africans are pastoralist and nomadic people that need vast land for grazing and water. This deprived African borderland communities of economic opportunity by hindering their movements, and forcing them to live differently than their traditional life. Changing the lifestyle and structural systems of African communities negatively affected their traditional life, administrative structures, and economic well-being. Similarly, the Afar people of Ethiopia were split amongst Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, and the Anyuaa and Nuer were split between Ethiopia and South Sudan.įollowing artificial border designs, African communities could not move freely in their daily activities and nomadic practices, which inflicted economic hardship and social inconvenience. Such colonial borders have massive effects on Somali people who share a common culture, a similar way of life, and the same religion, but live as separate citizens of Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya. In the Horn of Africa, for instance, they split Somalis into French Somaliland, British Somalia, Italian Somalia, Ethiopian Somalia, and the Somali region of northern Kenya. Artificial borders split many closely related ethnic groups into different colonial regions. However, these focused solely on land control and disregarded the impacts of partitioning on ethnic groups. Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister in 1906, demonstrated this arbitrary and under-informed approach at the signing of the Anglo-French convention on the Nigeria-Niger boundary in 1906, when he said: “We have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps were no white man’s foot ever trod: we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediments that we never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.” This statement helps us to understand how colonial powers designed artificial African boundaries without knowledge of the land and local communities.Įuropean powers completed cartographic surveys of territories through boundary commissions from 1900-1930, which allowed total control of colonies. However, many errors were made due to their superficial knowledge of the continent and undeveloped maps in existence.
The Berlin Conference legitimized the partition of Africa colonialists designed regional maps without providing any notification to the local African rulers, and made treaties among colonial powers to avoid resource competition. Moreover, colonial powers utilized various techniques to influence African leaders and obtain resource rich land. Colonial powers employed underhand mechanisms in territorial acquisition and boundary making such as deceit, fraud, intimidation, and bribery.
In many African countries, a significant portion of their population belongs to groups split by colonial partitions.ĭuring the onset of colonization, European powers preferentially dealt with African local leaders and chieftaincies.
They partitioned land from European capitals, with limited knowledge of the geography, history, and ethnic composition of Africa. During this period, European colonizers partitioned Africa into spheres of influence, colonies, and various segments. The Scramble for Africa began with the Berlin Conference (1884–85) and ended by the early twentieth century. Photo courtesy of Stuart Rankin via Flickr Commons. Pictured here is a map of the Partition of Africa.
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