Indigenous Slavery in Africa’s History: Conditions and Consequences

This paper is the first study to conduct an econometric analysis of indigenous slavery in Africa. We distinguish indigenous slavery from export slavery and survey the literature in order to identify the factors that shaped its prevalence and its impact on Africa’s long-term development. We present data collected from colonial records and utilize these in a statistical analysis. The results show that indigenous slavery was more common in Equatorial and West Africa (specifically the Belgian colonies) and in societies with more developed states. Our analysis also shows that indigenous slavery is robustly and negatively associated with longterm income development. We find evidence that this effect runs via human capital formation, especially health status. We thank Robert Inklaar and participants in a 10 September 2008 seminar at the Utrecht School of Economics, where an earlier version of this paper was presented, for their helpful discussions and suggestions. Any errors are ours.