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Beyond the chains: Slavery and Africa's wealth gap with the world

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  • Andrew Phiri

    (Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economic Studies, Nelson Mandela University)

Abstract

Slave trades represent one of the most controversial historical events experienced over the last millennium and many researchers are in consensus of the legacy of slavery being one of the deepest underlying factors behind Africa's current state of underdevelopment. This study seeks to quantify the effects which slave exports exerted on per capita GDP for 49 African countries as well as on the 'income gap' between Africa and Western slave beneficiaries. Our findings unanimously point to a statistically significantly inverse relationship between slave exports and income/income differences hence supporting the intuition of slavery being a fundamentally deep root of developmental differences between Africa and the Western world beneficiaries. Our results are robust to adjusted measures of slave exports; inclusion of additional control variables; dummy variables well as to different subsamples.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Phiri, 2021. "Beyond the chains: Slavery and Africa's wealth gap with the world," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(1), pages 103-116.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-00227
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Slave exports; income gap; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C2 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables
    • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations

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