Answer:
After the Industrial Revolution, Europe needed new territories in which to exploit raw materials in order to sustain its industrial production, since in the 1700s and 1800s the powers had lost a large part of their colonies in America.
Thus, the European nations agreed in the late 1800s on the distribution of the African continent at the Berlin Conference, an agreement that formalized the division of Africa, increasing colonialist activities of European countries in that continent.
At the conference, the boundaries of most of the colonies in Africa were decided. In later periods, power in individual areas changed, but the boundaries in most cases remained as they were then established.