It was in 1885 that Otto von Bismarck , the first Chancellor of Germany called a conference of the heads of all European nations in a bid to amicably share the African continent and avoid fighting each other over land in a foreign and very environmentally hostile territory. So they sat at a round table in Berlin and placed the map of Africa on the table and started drawing lines, sometimes across it, sometimes dividing towns into different countries.
Thus, by the time the conference which started in 1884 ended in 1885, they had reached an agreement on who owned what piece of the African continent and with everybody happy, the exploitation of Africa started. Meanwhile as this went on, not one of the people who attended that conference had ever set foot on African soil.
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