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Historians referred to the expansion of European empires into Africa during the Age of Imperialism. A day before the scramble for Africa, it was said that only ten percent of the continent was under the control of Western nations. In 1875, the most important holdings were Algeria, whose conquest by France had started in the 1830s despite Abd alQadir's strong resistance and the Kabyles' rebellion in the 1870s; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom, and Angola, held by Portugal.

It has contributed to economic, social, and political underdevelopment by spurring ethnic-tainted civil conflict and discrimination and by shaping the ethnic composition, size, shape and landlocked status of the newly independent states.

Causes

There are several main causes to the Scramble for Africa, these include but not limited European competition, ethnocentrism, the spread of Christianity and new innovations. The prior cause of the Scramble for Africa was that European nations were seeking large parts to boost their access to resources and people.

In the century or so before the start of the Age of Imperialism, Europe underwent a major transformation in the form of the Industrial Revolution. This led to the construction of many factories throughout the cities in Europe and the European nations were in search of territory in order to gain access to more resources, which could be used to develop products in their resources. As such, this led to the ‘scramble’ in Africa as the European nations competed for different regions of the African continent.

Also, of the Scramble for Africa was the view of racial superiority that Europeans expressed throughout the 19th century. More specifically, as Europeans traveled globally and colonized different regions, they came into contact with all sorts of different indigenous people. As such, European beliefs about their own supposed racial superiority helped inform their interactions with the people they encountered, including native Africans.

A third cause for the events of the Scramble for Africa was the need for the European nations to promote their own religious values around the world. Similar to the belief in their own racial superiority, Europeans also promoted Christianity as superior to the religious beliefs of the indigenous peoples that they encountered, including those in Africa.