At the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, the major European powers agreed rules for claiming and partitioning African territory, including the principle of effective occupation. Over the following two decades almost the entire continent was carved into colonies and protectorates, with boundaries drawn on maps with little regard for existing societies. Colonial powers founded administrative capitals and developed coastal port cities to extract and export raw materials.
It imposed arbitrary borders that still define African states and created colonial cities whose racially segregated layouts, separating European quarters from African ones, continue to shape patterns of inequality in African urbanism.
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