NIGERIA

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Slaves had always been part of West African trade across the Sahara, but gold was the chief commodity that built the great empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai. This changed once Portuguese traders began plying West Africa’s coasts in the late 15th century. Early Portuguese traders actually bought slaves from the Nigerian coast to sell to the Akan people along the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana). After the Europeans began using Africa as a source of slaves for the sugar plantations in the New World, the transatlantic market grew exponentially. On Nigeria’s southern coast, slave traders often contracted with local kings or chiefs to provide slaves, with the kingdom of Oyo and the Aro Confederacy, an Igbo group, becoming two major suppliers. Great Britain abolished slavery in 1807, but a profitable trade continued well into the 19th century, with traders running British blockades off Nigeria. Some estimates put the number of slaves sent to the Americas from Nigeria at 3.5 million.

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Cameroon/Congo

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The international slave trade in this region began with the Portuguese on Cameroon’s west coast, though it became the practice of many European countries. The threat of malaria prevented any significant settlement or conquest of the interior prior to the 1870s—when an effective malaria drug (quinine) became available. So the Europeans initially focused on coastal trade and acquiring slaves. Most slaves were captured by African middlemen from the interior and taken to port cities to be sold, and the flow of human traffic from many ethnic groups was constant. Around 1.5 million slaves left Africa from this region of Cameroon; combined, nearly half of all slaves destined to work in the Western Hemisphere came from Cameroon and the Congo River Basin. Many slaves from the coastal regions of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea ended up in Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina.

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Benin/Togo

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European slave traders first became a force on the coast of West Africa. By 1475 Portuguese traders had reached the Bight of Benin, and by the mid-1500s Spain and England had also legalized the slave trade. As the demand for slaves grew, the Kingdom of Dahomey (and others in the region) provided European traders with a constant supply in exchange for goods and firearms. Dahomey, which had long paid tribute to the Yoruba Empire of Oyo, used its new weapons and power to throw off that yoke.

More than 2 million slaves were sent from the Bight of Benin to the New World, and among them were many from Benin and Togo’s major ethnic groups. The Adja, Mina, Ewe and Fon groups of this region were the third-most enslaved groups sent to the New World. A great number of these went to Haiti and Brazil, where they established their traditional religious practices and ancestor worship, better known today as Voodoo, Santería or Macumba.

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Senegal, the Gambia

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Portuguese traders reached the estuary of the Senegal River in the mid-1400s. Over the next four centuries the direction of trade shifted. Instead of heading inland, toward the Sahara, it began to flow outward, toward the European traders on the Atlantic Coast. As colonial powers began to push farther inland themselves in the 19th century, they eventually brought an end to local kingdoms and actually furthered the spread of Islam, which became a way of uniting against the European invaders.

Slave raiding and trading were major sources of revenue for the region’s kings, and the island of Gorée (just a mile off the coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar) became the largest slave-trading center in Africa. Controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, the island served as a warehouse where, over a 200-year period, millions of slaves were taken from their homeland. The island, with its House of Slaves museum and memorial, is now a pilgrimage destination for the African diaspora from the slave trade.

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Ivory Coast/Ghana

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Modern Ivory Coast and Ghana lie on the periphery of the great empires of Mali (ca. 1230–1550) and Songhai (ca. 1375–1591), and the region’s population felt their influence. As empires rose and fell, people pushed into new lands or fled old ones. Dyula (or Juula) traders, a merchant class of Mandé people from Mali, made their way south, introducing goods, inhabitants and Islam to the northern edges of modern-day Ghana. They later established the Kong Empire (1710–1898) in northeastern Ivory Coast. Other Mandé groups settled in western Ivory Coast, where they make up almost 25% of the population today.

According to their own oral tradition, the Dagomba people came from the area northeast of Lake Chad, finally settling in northern Ghana. The Senufo came south from Mali into Ivory Coast in about the 15th century. The Ewe people migrated from the east, from the areas now making up Togo and Benin.

The most significant migration for Ghana and Ivory Coast, however, began with the arrival of the Akan people. The Akan had established the state of Bonoman—a center of trade for gold, salt, kola nuts, ivory and leather—in western Ghana/eastern Ivory Coast. From Bonoman, they spread out looking for gold.

 

The Akan people

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With a population of 20 million, the Akan represent the largest ethnic group in Ghana and Ivory Coast. The Akan are a matrilineal society believed to have originated in the Sahel region and who then traveled south into Ghana and Ivory Coast.

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The Ashanti, a subgroup of the Akan, formed a number of states in Ghana built around trade and gold. They traded with the Songhai and Hausa along traditional inland routes and also with European partners, starting with the Portuguese, who arrived on the coast in 1482. New crops, such as maize and cassava, and slave labor allowed them to push farther into the forests, clearing land to farm and mining gold. In fact, before the transatlantic slave trade began in earnest, the Ashanti bought slaves from the Portuguese.

The Ashanti Empire was established in 1701 by Osei Tutu, who began unifying Ashanti states around the city of Kumasi. The Ashanti continued to expand, through diplomacy and military conquest, building one of the most advanced and powerful empires in sub-Saharan Africa. Not all Akan people wanted part in the empire, and some fled west into modern-day Ivory Coast. These included the Abron, the Baoulé and the Agni. In the 19th century, the Ashanti fought a series of wars with British troops, as England tried to firm up its hold over Ghana. Eventually, the Ashanti kingdom, known as Asanteman, became a British protectorate in 1902 and today is a state within modern Ghana.

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