The impact of the slave trade on Africa

Monday 8 June 2020. Yesterday, protesters in Bristol tore down a statue of British slave trader Edward Colston (1636-1721) and threw it into the harbour. 

Elikia M'bokolo, April 1998

https://mondediplo.com/1998/04/02africa

Monday 8 June 2020. Yesterday, protesters in Bristol tore down a statue of British slave trader Edward Colston (1636-1721) and threw it into the harbour. Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which between 1672 and 1689 transported roughly 100,000 men, women and children from west Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas, where they were sold as slaves. As Elikia M'Bokolo wrote back in 1998, 'The figures, even where hotly disputed, make your head spin. Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean