Von Adalbert von Rößler (†1922) - Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, S.308; Am 28. April 2006 von Morty in die deutschsprachige Wikipedia geladen., Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4259336
Berlin Conference, Africa Conference or Congo Conference - depending on who you ask, you will get different names for the event that took place 140 years ago in Berlin at the behest of Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and decided the fate of an entire continent. Between 15 November 1884 and 26 February 1885, a number of royal houses, empires and republics came together in the capital of the German Empire to discuss trade routes and set out claims in Africa. Mind you, the people concerned were not present: Not a single African sat at the table in Berlin.
Actually, it was ‘only’ a matter of regulating the freedom of trade of those colonial powers in the catchment area of the Congo and Niger rivers and making it legally secure, as these major European powers had mainly established trading posts on the coasts of Africa and had barely developed the interior of the continent.
The Europeans, who had previously lived primarily in microstates, should have known from their own experience that this border demarcation would favour wars and civil wars in the future. Among the powers that now marched to Berlin were arch-enemies and hereditary enemies who had met on the battlefield only a short time before. Prussia had fought France and conquered Alsace-Lorraine in 1870/71 and only then proclaimed the German Empire, in 1866 Austria and Prussia had crossed swords and the previous year Denmark and Prussia, on whose side Austria was still fighting at the time. As long as the borders in Europe remained untouched, agreement could be reached and in this respect Bismarck's conference was a great diplomatic success.
The Congo Act and its consequences
In addition to the European and Asian Great and Central Powers Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway and the host, the USA, which was only present as an observer, also gathered in the Reich Chancellery at Wilhelmstrasse 77 in Berlin.
Within three months, 13 states unabashedly laid down their claims to the resource-rich continent. The final act of the conference, the so-called ‘Congo Act’, contained 38 articles stipulating the freedom of trade of the signatory states in the entire catchment area of the Congo and Lake Nyassa, the right to acquire a colony only for the occupying nation, but also a ban on the slave trade, for example.
While the German Empire secured claims to German South-West Africa (today's Namibia), Cameroon, Togo and German East Africa (today's Tanzania) including Zanzibar, the undisputed crown jewel - the Congo - fell to Belgium, a state that played no role at all in the concert of the great powers. The Congo region is far from the coasts and was considered inaccessible. From 1879, however, Belgium's King Leopold II negotiated 450 treaties with local chiefs along the Congo River with the help of the American adventurer Henry Morton Stanley and ripped them off in the process. Not only did they lose their land for trinkets, their labour also belonged to the king. The conference sealed the fate of his African subjects, as Congo - 80 times the size of tiny Belgium - fell to King Leopold II himself as private property.
In the end, the conference led to these nations dividing up the continent among themselves and drawing absolutely arbitrary borders, sometimes based on the course of rivers or mountains or, for the sake of simplicity, using a ruler - without taking tribal areas and social structures into account.
Belgium's monarch exploited the Congo as brutally as possible, luring huge profits from rubber and ivory. Up to ten million people fell victim to his rule in the vast territory that today makes up the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Polish-English writer Joseph Conrad thematised these atrocities in his 1902 story ‘The Heart of Darkness’, which opened the eyes of many people. In the end, Leopold II had to sell the Congo, which, unlike Conrad, he never set foot in, to the Belgian government in 1908.
Today, a memorial plaque on the corner of Wilhelmstraße and Kolonnadenstraße commemorates the Africa Conference. Bismarck's Imperial Chancellery has long since ceased to exist - in contrast to the often arbitrarily drawn borders in Africa.
Africa's world war
What happened to the Congo? More or less beyond the perception of the industrialised countries, the continent experienced something in the 1990s that can safely be called ‘Africa's World War’. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 also infected the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (until 1997 the country was called Zaire), where kleptocrats and long-term rulers such as Mobutu Sese Seko and the Kabilas shamelessly helped themselves. The Hutu genocidaires of Rwanda fled to the Congo, where Hutus also live. The surviving Tutsi pursued them and six armies from neighbouring countries joined in alongside countless militias, plundering the Congo in the process. An estimated six million people died in the Congo between 1993 and 2003, in addition to the 800,000 people in Rwanda. Little notice was taken of this beyond Africa.
Africa today
In 2000, 831 million people lived in Africa, today there are 1.5 billion. The continent's 54 countries are developed to varying degrees. The continent's population is the youngest in the world, the population growth - and therefore also the market potential - is massive. Many economies are also growing rapidly: in its World Economic Outlook published in April, the IMF predicts that nine of the 20 fastest-growing economies on the planet will be African by 2024, namely Niger, Senegal, Libya, Rwanda, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gambia and Benin. Overall, the sub-Saharan countries will record higher growth than the global average (3.2%) with an average growth rate of 3.8% in 2024.
The continent's growing weight is now also making itself felt in organisations and alliances. With Egypt and Ethiopia, the third African state after South Africa has now joined the BRICS alliance. A number of African countries are expressing interest in cooperating within this framework.
Is it time for a second Africa conference?
The German government has certainly understood that relations with African countries are essential with regard to climate change, migration, resources, anti-terrorism cooperation, but also the strong presence of Russia and China, which is perceived as problematic.
The cooperation in the G20 format ‘Compact with Africa’ initiated by Germany emphasises the will to approach the growth continent par excellence as partners on an equal footing. To date, thirteen African countries have joined the initiative, which aims to attract private sector investment to Africa, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.
Basically, there should be a second, completely different Africa conference - with as many Africans at the table as possible.
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