Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, conquest, and colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The contending powers were Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, driven by the Second Industrial Revolution in the era of New Imperialism.
The Scramble for Africa unfolded in the late 19th century and early 20th century. As late as the 1870s Europeans controlled roughly 10 percent of the continent, and by 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained outside European control.
The 1884 to 1885 Berlin Conference, convened by Otto von Bismarck, set the rules of effective control over African territories and is seen as emblematic of the scramble. Its effective occupation principle turned colonisation from informal economic penetration into systematic political control, requiring powers to notify others before claiming territory.
Up to 8 million of the estimated 16 million native inhabitants of the Congo Free State died between 1885 and 1908. Roger Casement attributed the depopulation to indiscriminate war, starvation, reduction of births, and disease, with sleeping sickness and smallpox killing nearly half the population around the lower Congo River.
The Fashoda Incident was a standoff in eastern Sudan where a French force under Jean-Baptiste Marchand reached the fort first, followed by a British force under Lord Kitchener. The French withdrew, and the confrontation led to the Entente Cordiale of 1904, which guaranteed peace between Britain and France.
By 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained outside European control. Ethiopia was eventually occupied by Italy in 1936, while Liberia held strong connections with the United States and was Africa's oldest republic.
At the Organisation of African Unity conference of 1964, newly independent African nations decided to keep their colonial borders. They feared civil wars and regional instability, and placed emphasis on pan-Africanism instead.