African Institution

The African Institution was founded in 1807 after British abolitionists succeeded in ending the slave trade based in the United Kingdom. The Institution was formed to succeed where the former Sierra Leone Company had failed—to create a viable, civilised refuge for freed slaves in Sierra Leone, in West Africa. It was led by James Stephen and William Wilberforce. From 1823, its work was mostly taken over by the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, and it ceased to exist sometime between 1826 and 1828.