Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa

• The slave trade brought about a negative impact on African societies and led to long-term impoverishment.
• Large areas of Africa were devastated and societies disintegrated due to the slave trade.
• An estimated 12m Africans were taken to the Americas during the slave trade, with about half dying on the way.
• By the end of the 17th century, European demand for African captives, particularly for the sugar plantations in the Americas, became so great that they could only be acquired by raiding and warfare.
• The Asante (Ashanti people) Empire dominated the area known as the Gold Coast (Ghana) and grew wealthy by selling captives to European traders and fighting many wars to defend and expand their empire.
• Coastal villages whose main trades had been fishing and salt production became ports for slavery and trading due to the slave trade.
• 75% of African enslaved people were held near the rivers Luanda, Congo and Niger where diseases like malaria were common and many died in these holding ports due to the slave trade.
• The mass movement of those enslaved across Africa increased the spread of disease due to the slave trade.
• Europeans also brought with them deadly diseases, such as European strains of syphilis and smallpox, typhus and tuberculosis, to Africa during the slave trade.
• Many areas of Africa became depopulated due to the slave trade.
• Experts have predicted that if there had been no slave trade, the population of Africa in 1850 would have been 50m instead of 25m.
• Having fewer young healthy people to produce food due to the slave trade led to large areas of land being uncultivated, resulting in famine which increased the death toll.
• The slave trade led to conflict between African tribes as the demand for more and more enslaved people led to more hatred and violence.
• Slavery encouraged ethnic and social division due to the slave trade.
• For centuries, slavery constrained the economic development of Africa, leading to widespread poverty, particularly on the west coast.
• History shows that slavery provoked a culture of political violence and disregard for human life which created attitudes of racism and contempt for Africans.
• Today, more than 200 years after the abolition of slavery, ideas about the inferiority of Black Africans still remain in western society as witnessed by the Black Lives Matter campaign.