ABSTRACT
Slavery in Africa today cannot be considered in isolation from the general human condition that exists there. This vast continent has about 350 million people of great diversity, among whom traces of slavery, serfdom and related practices occur to varying degrees in different places. General statements about slavery are unlikely to be of much relevance in a continent with such a wide variety of people and places. From the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to the mouth of the Senegal River the Sahara Desert reaches to the Atlantic, whose shores have therefore been unwelcoming to many Europeans who have since the fifteenth century, come from the sea. The Moors, and neighbouring nomadic peoples of the desert, are some of the few groups left in Africa who have a system of slavery that differs very little from that of their ancestors.
