TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND THE ROOTS OF AFRICA’S ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

The political economy of slavery was naturally a phenomenon suited for underdevelopment. Indeed, slavery, by its nature and character, was the highest manifestation of savagery. Unlike some other forms of degradation, it annihilates the soul and devastates the body. The European slavers devised hideous methods of kidnappings, battering, branding with red hot metal blades, chaining, dehumanizing and totally emasculating their victims. No calamity or tragedy in time and space equaled the ruinous effect of slavery on Africa’s development trajectory. At the human psychological level, the African victims and their families were literally chased out of history, in the sense that they lost their humanity and identity. In reality, slavery arrested and completely altered the original and autonomous process of genuine development of states in the continent. The scourge of slavery brought about anarchy, despoliation, warfare, depopulation, murder, inter-ethnic rivalry and a general culture of fear and insecurity. As a result, African economies suffered from unprecedented forced migration of the pillars of production. The foremost impact of the five centuries long slave trade, by which an estimated 50 million Africans were taken away, was that it drained the continent of her productive population and thus fatally destroyed her economy. This paper, therefore, contends that the transatlantic slave trade fundamentally accounted for Africa’s socio-political and economic woes. Scholars and extant literature tend to promote the narrative that colonialism, neo-colonialism and leadership failure explain Africa’s underdevelopment. While these factors are complicit in Africa’s underdevelopment conundrum, the transtlantic slave trade remains the root of Africa’s arrested development.

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