Gold, Ivory and Slaves

Norman Handy vividly describes travelling down the West Coast of Africa. He writes about the misery of Africans, captured and shipped across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery. European manufactured goods were traded in Africa to buy slaves who were then shipped to the Americas, to be traded again for tobacco, sugar and rum.



More than twelve million Africans were slaves until they were eventually freed. In the scramble for Africa, colonial powers competed to grab as much African land as they could. It wasn't about slavery, but about despicable economic exploitation. Borders were arbitrarily decided by colonial powers with no regard to local realities. Then came independence and exploitation of the local people by their own people - widely known as 'The African Way'. Is it any better today?