In the year 2013, when it became clear that I an African, born in Benin would be living in Berlin, I couldn’t help but think of The Berlin Conference that started in November 1884, where the leaders of European nations including Russia and Turkey/Ottoman Empire… gathered in this city to decide the future of a continent that was not theirs. 

In school, I remember hearing teachers saying that the continent was « divided like a cake ». Even as a child, that image struck me. How casually it was said, how normalized it was that people who had never set foot in most parts of Africa could sit around a table and slice it into pieces. 

Hosted by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) was framed as a diplomatic negotiation over trade and territorial claims in Africa, especially in the Congo Basin. But in reality it became a formalized agreement to divide and colonize the entire African continent. 

Fourteen countries including Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden-Norway, Italy, Austria-Hungary and others. Not a single African representative was present.

This moment marked the beginning of the colonial occupation of the continent. Through maps, rulers and treaties, they carved borders through living land and kinship systems with no regard for cultural, spiritual, linguistic, familial geographies and ancestral sovereignties that had existed for centuries.

This laid to the groundwork for: 

• Colonial occupation and the violent suppression of African sovereignty.

• The fragmentation of families, nations and communities.

• The creation of artificial borders that continue to fuel conflict, displacement and systemic harm.

• A spiritual and relational rupture still present in our bodies, our politics and our diasporas today. 

WHY THIS SPACE

The Berlin Conference was not only a political meeting; it was a performance of power over. The kind of power that fragments, silences and erases. It declared ownership over peoples and lands were never theirs to own. So this space is born out of remembrance and also out of refusal. It is an act of returning to what was taken, of reclaiming AGENCY, RESPECT AND ANCESTRAL SOVEREIGNTY that were denied to us when others decided our borders, our names, our fates. 

To sit together in grief today is to say we remember. We remember what was fragmented, stolen and what is still present in our migrations, our identities, our relations to land and to one another. But we also remember our agency, our spiritual continuities, our capacity to feel, to create, to re-member. Through collective grieving, we begin to loosen the hold of colonial trauma, to turn toward our own ways of witnessing and to reweave belonging the lines that were drawn for us, without us. 

WHAT TO EXPECT

Storytelling and shared re-membering

Guided reflection and grounding 

Collective grief practices

Silence, song, ritualistic gestures

Space to rest and witness

PRACTICAL DETAILS

FORMAT: Online (Zoom, not recorded) 

FREQUENCY: Once a month, 

DATES: Saturday 15th November / Saturday 6th December / Saturday 3rd January 2026/ Saturday 7th February 2026

DURATION: 3 hours from 4pm to 7pm Berlin Time

WHO IS THIS SPACE FOR: Africans and African descendants 

CONTRIBUTION: FREE OFFERING

Registration is required: Please use the contact email below to register. 

If you decide to join, I ask THAT YOU COMMIT TO BEING PRESENT FOR ALL SESSIONS. Come as you are,  not in rush to leave, not to gaze, but to engage and immerse yourself fully in the experience.