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Despite the abolition of slave trade, the practice persists in many African countries where, some people use the guise of boosting a family's economic power to traffic humans who are forcefully engaged in demeaning labor.

Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons known as slaves are deprived of their personal freedom and compelled to provide their labor or services. The term also refers to the status or condition of those persons, who are treated as the property of another person or household. Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation in return for their labor. As such, slavery is one form of unfree labor.

At the end of the 14th century Europeans started to take people from Africa against their will. Initially they were mainly used as
servants for the rich. The Europeans justified the taking of slaves by arguing that they were providing an opportunity for Africans to become Christians. By the 17th century, the removal of slaves from Africa became a holy cause that had the full support of the Christian Church.

British merchants became involved in the trade and eventually dominated the market. They built coastal forts in Africa where they kept the captured Africans until the arrival of the slave-ships. The merchants obtained the slaves from African chiefs by giving them goods from Europe. At first, these slaves were often the captured soldiers from tribal wars.

However, the demand for slaves become so great that raiding parties were organised to obtain young Africans.
Skyra is a runaway Mauritanian slave. Her earliest childhood memories are of fetching water, tending animals and cooking and cleaning. Skyra was born into slavery - but her children are now free. "I was tied up all night and all day. They only untied me so I could do my chores. In the end I could barely move my limbs."
She never earned a single penny.

"All those years," she said, "and I don't even own a goat". Mohamed could not tell his surname or his age. As a slave, he didn't own the right to either, but in a candlelit shack in the sandy outskirts of the capital, Nouakchott, he told the story of his life: "I don't know how I became a slave. I was just born one. My family members were slaves. We did all the hard work for our master and all we received in return were beatings."

After three attempts at making slavery illegal, the latest as recently as 1981,

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