The Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885 affected the subsequent colonization of Africa in three main ways.  It decided which European power would control which area of Africa; it ensured that the “scramble” would be accomplished without any major conflicts between European powers; and it created new countries that had no basis in African political and cultural boundaries.

Before the conference, Europeans had only colonized relatively small portions of coastal Africa.  By the time of the conference, though, they were wanting to take more of the continent as industrialization increased the need for raw materials and as national competition made them all desire the prestige that large empires would bring.  This ensured that there would be a “scramble” for Africa.  Without the Berlin Conference, it is possible that the scramble would have involved wars between European states as they jockeyed for territory.  Instead, the conference settled the issue of who would get what in a peaceful way.  This shaped the ensuing colonization by making it peaceful (from an intra-European standpoint) and by determining which European country would get which area of Africa.

More importantly for Africa, the conference split the continent up between the European powers with little regard for African political and cultural boundaries.  The Europeans simply drew lines on maps without considering the human geography of the continent.  This meant that coherent groups of people got split between new countries.  It also meant that groups that did not get along got lumped together in a single new country.  Both of these factors shaped the ensuing colonization.  They ensured that the new political boundaries of Africa would be rather unstable and that there would be little national feeling among the African inhabitants of those countries.