How much of Africa had European powers claimed by 1914?

By 1914, at the start of World War I, European powers had claimed approximately 90 percent of the African continent. This period of rapid expansion, known as the Scramble for Africa, saw European nations establish colonial control over nearly all African territory to secure strategic trade routes and natural resources.12

Prior to this intense era of colonization, European control was significantly more limited; for instance, in the 1870s, European countries controlled only about 10 percent of the continent. By 1914, the only African territories that had escaped incorporation into a European empire were Ethiopia, which had long been an independent kingdom, and Liberia, which had become an independent republic in 1847.12