Berlin Conference 1884
The Berlin Conference was a bad decision made by just one world leader but by several. The conference was attended by major European powers and the United States in order to finalize the claims on African territories. It was a way to end the fighting between countries as they scrambled for territory on the resource rich African continent. A map was drawn up to establish current colonies and to establish a framework that would allow for future negotiations of claims on the continent.
The problem with the Berlin Conference was that it made no consideration for the people that lived in the colonies. Ethnic groups that had inhabited the same area now found themselves in different colonies and no longer able to cross the border. Migratory peoples found that they could no longer migrate their usual territories and herders found themselves cut off from their pastureland. Not only were the borders problematic but the Berlin Conference established the authority of European colonial powers to exploit the natural resources of their colonies for trade.
For 60 years the continent existed solely for the benefit of the colonial powers and once the colonies began achieving independence the borders drawn by the Europeans in 1884 remained the same. Tribal conflicts only continued after independence as warring tribes were still forced to inhabit the same land and were often cut off from their ancestral lands. Today the bad blood between tribes still exists and has led not only to discrimination within states but also very violent conflicts. Even more than a century later many of the current problems in Africa today can be traced back to the exploitation of the colonial powers.