Stop the Berlin Conference! (ft. Chinny Ukata & Astrid Madimba from It's a Continent)

Berlin, 1884. Fourteen European nations are sitting around a table carving up an entire continent like a Christmas turkey, and Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba from It's a Continent podcast have been sent back to stop them. The Berlin Conference was the moment European powers gave themselves the green light to colonise Africa, drawing borders with rulers and zero consultation. No African representatives were invited. Chinny and Astrid are here to correct that.

Their approach starts from a simple insight: the European nations were already in conflict with each other, so fan those flames and they can't agree on who gets what. The Game Master offers multiple infiltration routes. Chinny and Astrid go straight for espionage, forged documents, and rumour-spreading — turning the conference delegates against each other before they can turn against a continent. Four years of making African history accessible on their podcast has given them the knowledge. Whether the Game Master can handle two players with this much righteous determination is another question entirely.

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, hosted by Otto von Bismarck, established the rules for the Scramble for Africa and drew the impossibly straight borders still visible on maps today. The Gambia sitting inside Senegal like a rectangle around a river. Northern Africa's geometry. Communities split apart or forced together with zero consultation. Chinny and Astrid's podcast has spent four years showing that Africa's history is everyone's history. Now they're walking into the room where it happened.