Empire of evil
Britain, with its navy and proven skills of colonising, had a head start and had already fused commercial with military power to colonise all of India with a comparative handful of administrators.
The Netherlands, Portugal, France and Spain (Italy’s colonial campaign didn’t start until the 1910s) had all forcibly acquired colonies and managed them with varying degrees of brutality, so the late arrival of Belgium (which only existed since 1839) and Germany, unified in 1870, came comparatively late to the carve-up for Africa, with both taking up colonies in the west.
