In Africa, the Dutch settled at the Cape of Good Hope, originally planned as a stop-over for the East Indiamen en route to and from Asia, in addition to the conquest and construction of several forts in present-day Ghana, which became important in the Dutch slave trade. In some ways the Dutch expansion in the Atlantic resembled that of England and France. All three founded settlement and plantation colonies and all three, together with Portugal, established some footholds on the African coast. The Dutch in South Africa, however, incorporated large numbers of foreigners both as settlers and as soldiers.