# Abolition of slavery in Africa  
Trade relations developed during the era of the Atlantic slave trade had opened the path for the European conquest of Africa. At the end of the nineteenth century, Britain, France, Portugal and other European States gradually imposed their presence on the African continent, fuelling a process that was defined as the scramble for Africa. The new rule led to the gradual legal prohibition of slavery on African soil. However, emancipation was a lengthy and complex process that varied over time and from region to region. Slavery existed on African soil prior to the contact between Africa and Europe. Likewise, the Muslim slave trade (mainly to North Africa and the Middle East) and the African internal slave trade, which provided captives to the continent's internal market, emerged before the Atlantic slave trade and persisted throughout the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.  
Although slavery in Africa differed from the racialized chattel slavery that prevailed on the American continent, the development of the transatlantic slave trade had affected the nature of slavery in Africa (Lovejoy, 2012). The end of  
the Atlantic slave trade during the second half of the nineteenth century led many African societies to develop an export-oriented agricultural economy that largely relied on slavery as a mode of production (Manning, 1990, p. 106). Yet, in regions like West Central Africa, slavery continued expanding during the entire nineteenth century (Candido, 2020, pp. 70-71).