Slavery in contemporary Africa
Modern history of slavery in Africa / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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 (such as the Ashanti Empire) 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]