Slavery in contemporary Africa

This article is about the modern history of slavery in Africa. For historic forms of slavery, see Slavery in Africa.

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The continent of Africa is one of the regions most rife with contemporary slavery.[1] Slavery in Africa has a long history, within Africa since before historical records, but intensifying with the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trade[2][3] and again with the trans-Atlantic slave trade;[4] the demand for slaves created an entire series of kingdoms which existed in a state of perpetual warfare in order to generate the prisoners of war necessary for the lucrative export of slaves.[5] These patterns persisted into the colonial period during the late 19th and early 20th century.[6] Although the colonial authorities attempted to suppress slavery from about 1900, this had very limited success, and after decolonization, slavery continues in many parts of Africa despite being technically illegal.[7]

Slavery in the Sahel region (and to a lesser extent the Horn of Africa) exists along the racial and cultural boundary of Arabized Berbers in the north and darker Africans in the south.[8] Slavery in the Sahel states of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan in particular, continues a centuries-old pattern of hereditary servitude.[9] Other forms of traditional slavery exist in parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.[10] There are other, non-traditional forms of slavery in Africa today, mostly involving human trafficking and the enslavement of child soldiers and child labourers, e.g. human trafficking in Angola, and human trafficking of children from Togo, Benin and Nigeria to Gabon and Cameroon.[11][12]

Modern day slavery in Africa according to the Anti-Slavery Society includes exploitation of subjugate populations even when their condition is not technically called "slavery":[13][14][15]

Although this exploitation is often not called slavery, the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their "employers".

— Antislavery Society, What is Modern Slavery?

Forced labor in Sub-Saharan Africa[16] is estimated at 660,000.[17] This includes people involved in the illegal diamond mines of Sierra Leone and Liberia, which is also a direct result of the civil wars in these regions.[18] In 2017, the International Labour Office estimated that 7 in every 1,000 people in Africa are victims of slavery.[19]

  1. ^ Kusi, David K. (2000). Africa, One Continent and Many Religions: Towards Interreligious Dialogue in Africa (Thesis). Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN). doi:10.2986/tren.033-0550.
  2. ^ "Brazil and the slave trade, 1827–1839", The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade, Cambridge University Press, pp. 62–87, 1 March 1970, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511759734.005, ISBN 978-0-521-07583-1
  3. ^ Zink, Robert James. (1969). "Uhuru wa Watumwa" as a documentary of the Arab slave trade in East Africa. OCLC 792751768.
  4. ^ Green, Toby (2011), "Rethinking the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade from a Cultural Perspective", The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–28, doi:10.1017/cbo9781139016407.003, ISBN 978-1-139-01640-7
  5. ^ "The Origins of Slaves Leaving West Central Africa", The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867, Cambridge University Press, pp. 73–99, 26 June 2017, doi:10.1017/9781316771501.005, ISBN 978-1-316-77150-1
  6. ^ Allen, Richard B. (29 March 2017), "Asian Indentured Labor in the 19th and Early 20th Century Colonial Plantation World", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.33, ISBN 978-0-19-027772-7
  7. ^ "Which Way Africa-Towards Africa-Exit from Colonial Empire?", Africa in the Colonial Ages of Empire, Langaa RPCIG, pp. 443–495, 17 December 2017, doi:10.2307/j.ctvh9vtjn.13, ISBN 978-9956-764-22-8
  8. ^ "The mobilization of local ideas about racial difference has been important in generating, and intensifying, civil wars that have occurred since the end of colonial rule in all of the countries that straddle the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. ... contemporary conflicts often hearken back to an older history in which blackness could be equated with slavery and non-blackness with predatory and uncivilized banditry." (cover text), Hall, Bruce S., A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  9. ^ "Chad-Mali-Mauritania-Niger-Senegal-Upper Volta: Convention Establishing a Permanent Inter-State Drought Control Committee for the Sahel". International Legal Materials. 13 (3): 537–539. 1974. doi:10.1017/s002078290004568x. S2CID 249000440.
  10. ^ de Ste Croix, G. E. M. (1988), "Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour", Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis, pp. 19–32, doi:10.4324/9780203401514_chapter_one, ISBN 978-0-203-33181-1 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. ^ "news-from-human-rights-watch-vol-l5-no8a-borderline-slavery-child-trafficking-in-togo-april-2003-84-pp". Human Rights Documents Online. doi:10.1163/2210-7975_hrd-2156-0326.
  12. ^ "Traditional Slavery in Niger", Anti-Slavery International, Society's Secretary-General broadcast on the ABC on 9 March 2005 at 9.30 pm.
  13. ^ Washington, Booker T. (4 January 2020). Up from slavery. Magdalene Press. ISBN 978-1-77335-133-9. OCLC 1141252700.
  14. ^ Brace, Laura (1 March 2018), "Glimpses of Slavery", The Politics of Slavery, Edinburgh University Press, doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474401142.003.0010, ISBN 978-1-4744-0114-2
  15. ^ Allain, Jean (1 January 2015), "When Forced Marriage is Slavery", The Law and Slavery, Brill–Nijhoff, pp. 466–474, doi:10.1163/9789004279896_022, ISBN 978-90-04-27989-6
  16. ^ Bratton, Michael (29 January 2009), "22. Sub-Saharan Africa", Democratization, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/hepl/9780199233021.003.0022 (inactive 13 November 2024), ISBN 978-0-19-923302-1{{citation}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  17. ^ "Workers' Alliance against Forced Labour and Trafficking - ITUC" (PDF). Retrieved 14 October 2015.
  18. ^ "Forced Labour". London: Anti-Slavery International. Archived from the original on 26 October 2010. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
    "What is modern slavery?". London: Anti-Slavery International. Archived from the original on 1 July 2009. Retrieved 16 December 2023.
  19. ^ Ukomadu, Angela; Chile, Nneka (7 August 2019). "West African slavery lives on, 400 years after transatlantic trade began". Reuters. Retrieved 8 August 2019.