Many Americans today mistakenly believe that slavery was invented by America or that it existed only in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. This narrow view—often echoed in modern demands for reparations—paints white societies as uniquely responsible for slavery’s horrors. Yet long before European ships reached Africa’s coasts, Africans were capturing, owning, and exploiting slaves in systems that were brutal and widespread. To confront the full truth about slavery, we must acknowledge African complicity in its expansion and persistence. Slavery was not simply imposed on Africans from outside—it was also defended by African elites, embedded in political and social institutions, and violently protected by rulers who depended on it for their power.
In precolonial Africa, slavery was not marginal. It was central to the economic structure of many societies. In Asante, for example, slaves were the backbone of agricultural production. From the 18th century onward, villages of slaves worked the land to feed armies and the aristocracy. These slave villages were located far from the capital, Kumasi, and produced the food and raw materials that sustained the ruling class.
Slave labor was used not only in farming but also in gold mining and kola nut cultivation. After the end of the transatlantic slave trade, when selling slaves to Europeans became difficult, Asante elites simply redirected their slaves into domestic economic production. Instead of trading them abroad, they put them to work in the countryside. The scale was significant: the state redistributed these slaves to lineage leaders and chiefs, who used them to fuel new agricultural enterprises, including the early cocoa plantations that would later define Ghana’s export economy.
Contrary to the claim that African slavery was more humane than its Atlantic counterpart, the reality was often starkly brutal. In the Sokoto Caliphate—one of the largest slave-owning societies in 19th-century Africa—slaves could be tied up in the sun, beaten, or placed in irons for disobedience. Those who worked on plantations were expected to feed themselves, but only after laboring on their master’s land. Women were frequently burdened with longer working hours due to their dual roles in farming and domestic labor. Furthermore, while some slaves were allowed to cultivate their own food or marry, this was not an act of generosity. It was a pragmatic strategy to prevent rebellion or escape, and it allowed slave owners to avoid the full costs of maintenance. Children born to slaves remained the property of the master, further reinforcing the cycle of bondage.
In the Asante court, even high-ranking palace slaves were never truly free. These elite slaves might oversee other servants or advise the king, but they could be buried alive with their master upon his death—an ultimate sign of their dehumanized status. Their loyalty did not translate into liberty, only into proximity to power.
When British colonial forces attempted to abolish slavery in the 19th century, they encountered fierce resistance not from European settlers, but from African rulers. In Asante, the abolition of slavery was seen as a direct attack on the political and economic structure of the state. Slavery was too valuable to abandon. Chiefs relied on slaves to work land, mine gold, carry goods, and sustain their households. Abolition infuriated the ruling classes so deeply that in 1906 they penned a blistering letter to the British commissioner expressing their grievances:
All our drums, blowing horns, swords, elephants tails, basket carrying and farming are done by these [...] and how can we kings and chiefs attend any calling by the government at Obuasi or Kumasi while we have nobody to carry us, beat our drums, blow our horns, carry our swords, and other necessary things?
Slavery provided the economic surplus that allowed rulers to maintain armies and patronage networks and they resented the diminution of status that abolition represented. As a result, British efforts to end slavery were met with violent opposition across the Gold Coast. Asante leaders fought wars to protect their political independence, and part of that resistance was rooted in their refusal to give up the slave-based economy that underpinned their society. Even after formal abolition, large numbers of slaves continued to live under conditions of bondage. Integration into free society was often impossible. Slaves and their descendants remained legally and socially disadvantaged, often excluded from full property and inheritance rights.
Among the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, slavery was also a cornerstone of the economy. Both men and women used slave labor to build entrepreneurial households. Men acquired slaves to grow yams, produce palm oil, and carry goods across trade routes. Women did the same—owning and managing large groups of slaves for farming, canoe trading, and market sales. In Aboh, one woman was recorded in the 1840s as owning over 200 slaves who farmed, processed palm oil, and transported goods for her.
Slaves were so important to economic life that losing them felt like losing the very foundation of prosperity. When emancipation came, many Igbo slave owners were devastated. As Ohadike writes, “when slaves left, owners wept.” Abolition made elites and even ordinary individuals quite insecure about their economic prospects. Slavery was the economic engine of Igbo society, and colonial abolition effectively destroyed this class of entrepreneurs.
Similar to the response of elites on the Gold Coast, slave owners in Igboland resisted British abolition with violence and cunning strategies. For example, in Arochukwu, where local leaders used oracles to enslave people under false pretenses, claiming divine judgment as a tool to expand their slave base, the British had to send military forces to suppress these systems. Likewise in western Igboland, the Ekumeku resistance fought colonial rule precisely because it threatened the institutions—including slavery—that had sustained local wealth and status for generations.
Across Africa, slavery was a fact of life. In Mali and Songhay, slaves farmed the fields and produced the grain that fed imperial armies. In Muslim West Africa, massive slave plantations supplied markets with cotton, indigo, and food. The Fulbe aristocracy of Futa Jallon depended on thousands of slaves to keep their estates functioning. In Masina, rulers expanded slave agriculture to raise taxes for defense. Even religious elites—imams and priests—owned slaves and used them to glorify their deities or finance holy wars.This wasn’t isolated. From the coast of Angola to the savannahs of northern Nigeria, slavery was everywhere. Some societies had fewer slaves, but nearly all had them. The idea that only centralized kingdoms practiced slavery ignores the fact that even small villages in so-called “stateless” societies raided their neighbors or bought captives to work the land.
In Africa, slavery was not a moral question. It was a question of survival, power, and control. Kings needed slaves to build armies. Merchants needed slaves to carry goods. Farmers needed slaves to clear land. Without slavery, these systems collapsed. A person’s wealth was measured in people rather than land. As such, slaves were the currency of power. That is why African rulers—whether in Asante, Igboland, or Sokoto—fought to preserve the institution. Some may have used spiritual language to justify it. Others used legal customs or religious courts. But at its heart, slavery remained a calculated, self-interested system of exploitation, maintained by political power, as brutal and systematic as anything in the Americas.
If we are to talk honestly about slavery and its legacy, we must include the African dimension. Slavery in Africa was not passive or accidental, it was deliberate. African elites captured, sold, and enslaved their neighbors—and they fiercely defended the system when Europeans tried to end it. This does not excuse the crimes of the transatlantic slave trade or the racism that developed from it, but truth demands context. Slavery was not invented by white people. It was a human institution, practiced on every continent and in every society, and sustained in Africa for centuries by Africans themselves.
If we want a future rooted in justice, it must be built on the whole truth—not just the convenient parts.
