Scramble for Africa

Scramble for Africa is a simulation of the European countries colonizing Africa. They all wanted different materials from different places. My country was Belgium. We wanted ivory, diamonds, and minerals and rubbers from the Congo river basin. We wanted to colonize Cote D'ivoire as well as the rest or the west coast or "Ivory Coast" for ivory, Botswana and Angola for the diamonds, and the Congo for minerals and rubber. Our strategy from the beginning was to conquer small sections of each country during each round. This way we would have at least a small amount of the resource we needed. During each round we would build on the amount of land we had of each country. That is how in the end we had large colonies in all of the countries we needed natural resources from. We considered what parts of Africa were desired by many European countries, so we conquered those as soon as possible. Mostly every country wanted to take South Africa, so we took the top section as out first piece of land. We also took under consideration which parts of Africa were not coveted by many countries, and we waited to conquer those until later in the simulation. We knew the western coast of Africa was not in demand, so we colonized that last. I think France won the Scramble for Africa. They wanted petroleum, iron, zinc, and diamonds. They got diamonds and zinc from South Africa, iron from Algeria and South Africa. I don't think they got much petroleum, but by just conquering South Africa France got almost all of the resources they needed. I think Great Brittan lost. They didn't completely colonize one place, but were scattered around Africa. They only got small amounts of any of their resources, and they didn't conquer the Suez canal. This simulation clarified to me why the European countries wanted to colonize in Africa.