How Africa can avoid getting Scrambled | China America, Russia etc are all pulling Africa for a share African leaders must be more imaginative and proactive in pooling their efforts and setting the agenda. At the conclusion of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, which notoriously carved up the African continent and apportioned its territories to Europe’s imperial powers of the day, signatories to the act that formalized the new borders and zones of influence highlighted education and the “material well-being of the native populations” as justification for their historic power grabs. Over the half-century or so that followed what came to be known as the “Scramble for Africa,” Europe did virtually nothing to further education on the continent and inflicted some of the worst atrocities of the modern era on Africans, as colonists raced to extract natural resources using land seizures and forced labor, and implemented military conscription to fight and provide pack horse-like logistical support in Europe’s wars. Most of what is recalled today about this terrible scramble are the arbitrary borders that created numerous economically crippled, landlocked territories and by turns divided members of coherent ethnic groupings and thrust together people with vast cultural differences or histories of enmity. Forgotten almost completely are the moral rationales that Western powers mobilized to justify their takeover and stewardship of an entire continent. Much has been written lately about a new scramble for Africa that is supposedly underway, involving a growing list of outside powers. The list is led by China, the United States, France, and Russia, but also present are other parties that have less history of involvement with Africa but are now being drawn in, including Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, and others. All are seeking business opportunities on the continent positioned to drive most human population growth over the rest of this century—or more insidiously, are aiming to counter the influence of a global or regional rival. Talk of a new scramble for Africa was strongly revived by last week’s U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington, the first since the Obama administration held one in 2014. U.S. press coverage has been peppered with allusions to a subtext for the event that was all but proscribed in the proceedings themselves but nonetheless seemed ever present in the minds of U.S. officials: how the United States can compete with China for influence in Africa.