How did the African slave trade impact the economy?

The African slave trade had a major impact on a limited number of economic activities: mostly the sugar production in the north and east of South America and on the Caribean islands, and the cotton production in the southern US States, which all could not have developed without slave labour. The ecomomies of these lands were all for a while heavily dependent on slave labor.

An often underexposed aspect of the African slave trade was the slave trade by Arab slave traders which lasted for many centuries more than the slave trade by whites. Probably hundreds of thousands of African slaves were over the centuries sold to Middle Eastern and north African countries, whose economy also became heavily dependent on slave labor.

The economy of western African kingdoms also prospered by the slave trade. The European trading posts on the African coast never organized raids for slaves themselves. It was the local African chiefs who found a considerable source of income in either selling their own subjects to European or American slave traders or organizing raids into neighboring areas to round up people to sell to them as slaves.