<P> Debates on the economic impacts of the Atlantic trade were further stimulated by the publication of Philip Curtin's The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969), which argued that 9.566 million slaves were exported from Africa through the Atlantic trade . In the 1970s, the debate on the economic impacts of the Atlantic trade increasingly turned on demographic estimates of slave exports in relation to continental birth rates . Most scholars now believe that Curtin was too conservative in his calculation, with most estimates ranging between 11.5 million to 15.4 million . More recently, John K. Thornton has presented an argument closer to that of Fage, while Joseph Inikori, Patrick Manning and Nathan Nunn have argued that the slave trade had a long - term debilitating impact on African economic development . </P> <P> Manning, for example, arrived at the following conclusion, after accounting for regional variations in slave exports and assuming an annual African population growth rate of 0.5.%: the population of Africa would have been 100 million rather than 50 million in 1850, if not for the combined effects of the external and internal slave trades . Nunn, in a recent econometric analysis of slave - exporting regions in all parts of Africa, found "a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves taken from a country and its subsequent economic development ." Nunn argues, moreover, that this cannot be explained by poverty prior to the slave trade, because more densely populated and economically developed parts of Africa regressed behind previously less developed, non-slave exporting areas during the course of the Atlantic, trans - Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave trades . </P> <P> The Berlin Conference (German: Kongokonferenz or "Congo Conference") of 1884--85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power . Called for by Portugal and organized by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalization of the Scramble for Africa . The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, while simultaneously eliminating most existing forms of African autonomy and self - governance . During this colonial time, the economy of Africa was re-arranged to serve Europe and Europeans, and the European industrial chain began in Africa and ended in European industrial warehouses . </P> <P> All of Africa would ultimately fall under European colonial rule by 1914, with the exceptions of Ethiopia and Liberia . The partitioning of African territory among European regimes often violated existing boundaries recognized by local Africans . Some of the independent African states affected by the partitioning of the continent included: </P>

Who controlled a lot of governments and financial agents in africa at the end of the 19th century