Why Do the Most Europe Influenced African Countries Have the Least Slavery?

BySecondary Researcher

Executive Summary

  • Europe is widely presented as bringing slavery to Africa.
  • This brings up the problematic results of the degree of slavery in each country in Africa.

Introduction

The coverage of slavery presents the mistaken idea that slavery was brought to Africa by colonialists. This is, of course, known to be false, but it may be even more dishonest than initially thought.

See our references for this article and other related articles at this link.

The Global Slavery Index

The Global Slavery Index tracks slavery internationally, assigning each country in the world a relative score for the prevalence of slavery. The scored map for Africa is quite interesting.

The lighter the color of the map, the less prevalent slavery is in that country. 

Countries with the Least Slavery in Africa

Something quite curious is that there appears to be an inverse relationship between the propensity of a country to score high in the Global Slavery Index versus the degree of European involvement in that country. The analysis can begin by listing the countries that have the lightest coloration.

  1. South Africa
  2. Morocco
  3. Algeria
  4. Tunisia
  5. Gambia

South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia

Each of these countries ranks as experiencing the most involvement from Europe. The first is South Africa, which was a country that, up until very recently, was run by Europeans. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have a high degree of European involvement in their political affairs, primarily due to their proximity to Europe. One country that stands out on the opposite side of the spectrum is Libya, which we and France bombed. After the Muammar Gaddafi regime was deposed, Libya became heavily involved in slavery. However, Western powers did not bring slavery to Libya; it arose due to the lawlessness that followed the bombings.

Gambia

Gambia was colonized by several European countries, including France and the UK, and gained its independence relatively late in 1965. It should also be remembered that of all the colonial powers, the UK was the first to abolish slavery and was a significant factor pushing on other countries to do the same. Curiously, Gambia has been going backward as its initial constitution protected religious freedom, but it declared itself a Muslim state in 2015.

Let us now look to the second lightest countries.

  1. Namibia
  2. Botswana
  3. Mali

Namibia and Botswana

Namibia is very similar to South Africa, except that it was formerly ruled by Europeans. Botswana, due to its mining industry, currently has one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa, and it also has a substantial degree of European influence.

Mali

The French colonized mali. Mali is extremely poor and has had many conflicts since its independence.

Countries With The Most Slavery in Africa

The analysis works in the opposite direction, as well. Let us review the reddest or countries with the most slavery.

  1. Chad
  2. Sudan
  3. South Sudan
  4. Somalia
  5. Mauritania
  6. Eritrea

Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia

The French colonized chad, but Wikipedia has the following to say about French involvement in Chad.

French rule in Chad was characterised by an absence of policies to unify the territory and sluggish modernisation compared to other French colonies.[17]

The French primarily viewed the colony as an unimportant source of untrained labour and raw cotton; France introduced large-scale cotton production in 1929. The colonial administration in Chad was critically understaffed and had to rely on the dregs of the French civil service. Only the Sara of the south was governed effectively; French presence in the Islamic north and east was nominal.

Sudan has a significant Arab influence, as the Kingdom of Sennar was founded in 1504 and was once part of the Ottoman Empire. Although partially influenced by the British, Sudan was administered by Egypt. South Sudan broke off from Sudan in 2011 and had approximately one-third of Sudan’s per capita income, which is already quite low.

Somalia resisted the attempts by the British and Italians to colonialize them. The British had areas of Somalia that they controlled, but Somalia was never colonized.

Mauritania

Mauritania’s European colonial history is similar to that of its neighbor Chad. France attempted to stop slavery in Mauritania, as the following quote explains.

French rule brought legal prohibitions against slavery and an end to inter-clan warfare. During the colonial period, 90% of the population remained nomadic. Many sedentary peoples, whose ancestors had been expelled centuries earlier, began to trickle back into Mauritania

France was never able to control Mauritania, and a significant reason was the constant conflict among the various tribes within Mauritania. This complex tribalism is one of the major items that has prompted Mauritiana to be a slave-based society as the tribes captured members of other tribes to sell them.

Eritrea

Eritrea has a long-term influence from Arab countries and was once part of the Ottoman Empire. Italy colonized a part of Eritrea in 1889 but was pushed out by the British in 1941 during World War II, who held it until 1950. Eritrea is a country that was lightly colonized. Italy maintained a colony for roughly 50 years, but it was only a part of Eritrea.

It is not only slavery, but the least colonized countries in Africa also have the most out of control population growth. 

How then does it make any sense to make the statement

“African countries are recovering from a legacy of colonialization.”

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Lessons from the Ivory Coast: The Decline of Africa After Independence

  • Every country in Africa has experienced decline since gaining independence. And this decline appears to be permanent.
  • The further African countries are from exposure to Europeans, the worse their outcomes tend to be.

Africa has some of the lowest-performing countries. Furthermore, the less European influence there is in Africa, the worse the outcomes tend to be for African countries.

 

Conclusion

There is a clear relationship between the degree of European influence in African countries and the degree to which African countries have modern-day slavery. This relationship is undiscussed and contradicts the storyline that slavery was imposed on Africa from the outside, namely by European powers. There is also little evidence that African countries are doing very much to root out slavery, and most African countries have poor working conditions, which they have had for over fifty or so years since colonialism passed, to make major improvements.

In fact, rather than putting effort into improving working conditions, most African leaders tell their constituents that they are still “recovering” from colonialism — and therefore, this restricts them from making improvements.

Most African countries don’t even bother stopping child labor. And US and European multi-nationals are only too happy to “virtue signal” but allow child labor to drop wages to provide them with more profits. They know which countries can be relied upon to use slave labor, semi-slave labor, or child labor to increase profits. 

However, even while companies like Apple benefit from overseas slavery — it will not stop them from virtue signaling and throwing some tax-deductible peanuts ($100 million is peanuts to Apple) to obtain positive PR coverage. Notice that 2,864 people liked this share on LinkedIn. The people that share or like these type of PR have no idea how much money Apple makes from exploited labor every day, or how they work against improving the lives of workers globally.

Is there a way of verifying this claim of a $100 million “initiative?” Apple can spend the money in any way it wants — and its auditors will agree to call it a racial initiative. You can buy pretty much any auditor that you want to say whatever you like as we cover in the article What is the Point of the Big Four Audit Firms Existing? Therefore, it does not matter what Apple says — and the media can be relied upon to do now follow up and will leave the story at just whatever Apple announces.

The Response from Some Blacks to the Article

We received feedback from some blacks that they did not like this article because it proposed that Africans were actually more in favor of slavers than whites. Many blacks want slavery to be characterized as entirely about whites being interested in taking slaves and Africans being always opposed to slavery. We cover this in the article How Making False and Selective Claims is Part of a Scam by Black Americans.