Review: The Curse of Berlin: Africa After the Cold War

Abstract

Nigerian scholar Adekeye Adebajo’s book The Curse of Berlin: Africa After the Cold War centres on the 1884 1885 conference in Germany, presided over by the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck. It was at this conference the imperial powers gathered to discuss matters concerning the free trade in the Congo and free navigation of the Congo and the Niger, but more importantly how to peacefully annex the rest of the continent among themselves. Ironically, it was this conference of ‘European locusts’ which called for peace that ‘distorted African politics, economics, and society; damaged indigenous cultures; and retarded socioeconomic development’ (p. 1) to the present day.