Overall, greed is what screwed the African kings over. Just like today, money means more than human life and dignity.
I'm surprised only Ethiopia united. If all of Africa had united, they would have been way too difficult to defeat. The whites had the weapons, but the Africans knew their land and had strength in numbers. Even today, Africa has a larger population than Europe.
Africa was too divided and had corrupted kings. Some traded slaves for peace. Some were just money hungry. Two major flaws was its downfall.
You also see a similar pattern with blacks in America. Not enough of us are united (this is obvious), and not enough of the rich educated blacks are willing to help their communities. Look at these rappers making large sums of money but don't do anything for the black community. I mean there are some, but not enough.
Were doing the same mistake our ancestors did to put it short. It's gotten so bad that probably the only way to get out of this is war like I mentioned in my other post.
Only unity will save us blacks.
African unity very well might be the key as you have intimated, But efforts towards that goal have been thwarted by European interests. The west doesn't seem to want Africa to use its valuable resources to build a manufacturing base to compete with the west. The west wants those resources to keep
themselves strong.
One Western tool for applying the screws to African progress has been the IMF or International Monetary Fund. Loans to African nations from that nefarious source are inevitably accompanied by usurious interest rates and demands for national austerity.
Developing nations, already saddled with depressed economies have little hope of recovery as the IMF and World Bank bleeds them dry, no matter how hard they work!
Still, not all African nations have been smothered by the blanket of Western induced austerity. Some have managed to capitalize on their oil resources. From that group of African based OPEC a star arose and championed Pan Africanism or African UNITY.
His dream of a united Africa was never realized after his regime was toppled and he was publicly murdered with the help of NATO by rebel factions in his own country. Can you guess who this African was?