International African Association The International African Association ( ) was a front organization established at the Brussels Geographic Conference of 1876 by the guests , and event hosted by King Leopold II of Belgium . The Association was used by King Leopold ostensibly to further his humanitarian projects in the area of Central Africa , the area that was to become Leopold ' s privately controlled Congo Free State . King Leopold volunteered space in Brussels for the International African Association ' s headquarters , and there were to be national committees of the association set up in all the participating countries , as well as an international committee . Leopold was elected by acclamation as the international committee ' s first chairman , but said that he would serve for one year only so that the chairmanship could rotate among people from different countries . The new body was welcomed throughout Europe ( contributions were sent by the Rothschilds and Viscount Ferdinand de Lesseps ) and the national committees were to be headed by grand dukes , princes , and other royals , but most of them never got off the ground . The international committee met once in the following year , reelected Leopold as chairman , despite his earlier pledge not to serve again , and then disintegrated . Nevertheless , thanks to the Association , Leopold succeeded in his goal of convincing the Belgian people and the major powers of Europe that his interest in Africa was purely altruistic and humanitarian - oriented . The Association was succeeded by the short - lived Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo , and the International Association of the Congo , which eventually dissolved when Leopold named his colony the Congo Free State . History . Creation . The organization was created at the 1876 Brussels Geographic Conference to which Leopold invited nearly forty well - known experts , who were mainly schooled in the geographic sciences or were wealthy philanthropists . They hailed from a number of European countries . As a result , the Association was originally conceived as a multi - person , scientific , and humanitarian assembly but it quickly became dominated by Leopold and his economic interests in Africa . Originally , the stated goal of the group was to " discover " the largely unexplored Congo and civilize its natives . The Association was intended to be a joint effort on the parts of all European countries present at the Conference , however , each nation formed its own national committee for exploration which would , in theory , share information with the whole of the Association , hence , a cooperative effort . However , national economic interests quickly took precedence over the group ' s supposedly philanthropic ideals . Each of these committees organized nationalized expeditions into the African interior and there was very little sharing of information , resulting in each nation claiming certain portions of African land for themselves . Exploration of the Region . From 1879 to 1884 famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley returned to the Congo , this time not as a reporter , but as an envoy from Leopold , and under the guise of the Belgian Committee , with the secret mission to organize a Congo state . At the same time , the French marine officer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza traveled into the western Congo basin and raised the French flag over the newly founded Brazzaville in 1881 . The Kingdom of Portugal , which also claimed the area due to old treaties with the native Kongo Empire , made a treaty with Great Britain on February 26 , 1884 , to block off the Congo Society ' s access to the Atlantic . At the same time , various European countries tried to acquire a foothold in Africa . France occupied Ottoman Tunisia and colonized today ' s Republic of the Congo in 1881 , followed by the Rivières du Sud colony at the Gulf of Guinea in 1884 . In 1882 , Great Britain occupied the Khedivate of Egypt , an Ottoman vassal which ruled over much of present - day Sudan and parts of Somalia . In 1870 and 1882 , Kingdom of Italy took possession of the first parts of Eritrea , while the German Empire declared Togoland , German Cameroon , and South - West Africa to be under its protection in 1884 . Disintegration . The large number of competing interests caused the Association to fracture and disintegrate over each member state ' s national interests . The Association ' s break - up eventually forced the Berlin Conference of 1884 – 1885 , effectively ending what became known as the Scramble for Africa . Despite the failure of the initial committee , the Belgian Committee that the Association generated continued to sponsor " humanitarian " missions into the bush . Formation of the International Association of the Congo . In 1878 , the International Association of the Congo was also formed , having more economic goals , but still closely related to the former society . Leopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society , which was turned to imperialistic goals , with the Association serving primarily as a philanthropic front . By these means , Leopold morphed the organization ' s " ideology from an international philanthropic association to that of a private commercial enterprise … [ and ] the change from a commercial plan to a political reality : the Congo Free State . "