16/05/2026
Look at a map of Africa and you'll notice something unusual. Many national borders are startlingly straight - cutting across the continent in clean geometric lines that look almost computer-drawn.
They were not drawn by geography. They were drawn at a conference table in Berlin.
In 1884–85, the major European powers gathered in Berlin for a conference that had one purpose: to divide Africa among themselves without going to war with each other. Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and others sat around a map and drew boundaries. The problem was that almost none of the negotiators had ever set foot in Africa. They had no knowledge of - or interest in - the hundreds of distinct ethnic groups, kingdoms, trade networks, and cultural boundaries that already existed across the continent.
So they drew straight lines. Lines along latitudes, longitudes, and rivers. Lines that split ethnic groups in two, forced rival peoples into the same territory, and ignored thousands of years of existing political and social organization.
Of Africa's roughly 50,000 km of international borders today, almost 44% are straight lines or simple geometric curves - one of the highest proportions of any continent.
The legacy of those lines is still felt across the continent: in ethnic tensions, separatist movements, and governance challenges that persist today.
