Slavery in Africa

Slavery in Africa has existed throughout the continent for many centuries, and continues in the current day. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of the continent, as they were in much of the ancient world. In most African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were largely treated as indentured servants and not treated as chattel slaves. When the Arab slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems changed and began supplying captives for slave markets outside of Africa.

Slavery in historical Africa was practiced in many different forms and some of these do not clearly fit the definitions of slavery elsewhere in the world. Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa.

Although there had been some trans-Saharan trade from the interior of Sub-Saharan Africa to other regions, slavery was a small part of the economic life of many societies in Africa until the introduction of transcontinental slave trades (Arab and Atlantic). Slave practices were again transformed with European colonization of Africa and the formal abolition of slavery in the early 1900s.