Reading the book, West Africa since A.D. 1000 by F.K. Buah. How was I not taught these things in school! What’s most eye-opening is the book’s account of the Slave Trade. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade lasted about 400 years and cost Angola and the West African coast  millions of lives – the numbers aren’t agreed upon. Nevertheless, here are some of the more interesting facts and their contemporary parallels:

Europeans generally did not go inland to capture slaves. African middlemen captured their own people and sold them to foreigners in exchange for Western articles such as cloths, pots, pans, liquor, weapons and other European artifacts that they’d only come to treasure after meeting Europeans – artifacts that until then, meant nothing to them. Our people valued things in the west more than what they had so much so that they sacrificed their own in exchange for an idea of wealth and happiness that was alien to them.
The bulk of the people who were captured and who survived the horrendous voyage to the Americas and Caribbean were between 15 and 35 years of age, the most healthy and most productive sector of the population. Remember that this lasted 400 years. So for four centuries Africa was losing its most productive demographic. The labor of these people produced the sugar, rubber, cotton and other raw materials that fueled the GDPs of the European empires that later returned to colonize Africa.
Because the Slave Trade was such a huge industry for centuries, the development of certain local industries was neglected. Plus, the people who might have stayed to grow said industries were busy either running for their lives, selling others overseas, developing other people’s worlds or too busy making quick money to think of the long term implications of their actions.

So ladies and gentlemen. Answer me this:

Given that you and I who live on this side have essentially exchanged our worlds for the benefits of being here, given that we still place more value on western ideas and technologies than our own, given that many of us who make it here could be the brains creating the businesses and services that would inevitably change life back home, given that most of us work in these economies (because we need to or want to) and continue strengthening western GDPs, given that local industries continue to go neglected et cetera… is brain drain the new Slave Trade except this time it’s voluntary?