The correct option is C
The race for Africa was the invasion, territorial division, colonization and the annexation of African territories during the period of the New Imperialism, between the 1880s and the beginning of the First World War, which involved France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Spain, justified in different claims of these countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely unaffected by "informal imperialism" and "civilization," was also attractive to European powers for economic and racial reasons. During a time when the trade balance of Great Britain showed a growing deficit, with the continental markets shrinking and increasingly protectionist due to the Great Depression between 1873 and 1896, Africa offered the United Kingdom, Germany, France and other countries a an open market from which a large surplus would be harvested: a market that would buy more of the metropolis than it sold in total.The United Kingdom, like most other industrial countries, had begun to have an unfavorable trade balance (which was counteracted, anyway, by the investment income of their colonies).