How did European countries gain African colonies by 1914?

Beginning in the 1880s, a process known at the time and since as the "scramble for Africa" occupied many of the major nations of Europe. By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained free of European political and economic control. European nations gained control of colonies by a number of means. Great Britain, which controlled a vast swath of land stretching from South Africa to Egypt, gained its territory through a combination of military conquest and political opportunism. Germany cynically exploited a civil war in Southwest Africa to carve out an empire, and King Leopold of Belgium cruelly governed a fiefdom in the Congo administrated by a company that he himself owned and profited from. The pivotal event in the colonization of Africa was the Berlin Conference, held in 1884. At this conference, the leading powers of Europe essentially agreed to carve up the continent of Africa among themselves, and, significantly, not to go to war over African territory. One African region after another fell under European control. In addition to the territories already mentioned that were ruled by Britain, Germany, and Belgium, Portugal controlled the regions today known as Angola and Mozambique, and France held most of the northwest corner of the continent. Millions of African people would remain under European rule until the decades after World War II.