1800s to Early 1900s
Trade Transforms Africa

“I opened the trade routes...with the goal of being my own agent.”

King Ekwikwi in Angola,
to a Portuguese official, 1886

With the end of the Atlantic slave trade and the onset of Europe’s Industrial Revolution, a new group of African leaders and entrepreneurs emerged, leading a trade revolution that changed domestic economies. Palm oil and peanut production boomed in West Africa, as did the ivory trade in Central and East Africa and coffee production in the North. From Angola, Ovimbundu caravans carried goods, guns, letters, and newspapers between the continent’s interior and coast.

History Matters
In the 1800s, Africans began to redirect their energies from local industries to agricultural exports. This shift, later intensified during colonialism, laid the basis for future dependence on imported manufactured goods.