Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "History of Africa" in English language version.
For most Africans between 10000 BCE to 500 CE, the use of slaves was not an optimal political or economic strategy. But in some places, Africans came to see the value of slavery. In the large parts of the continent where Africans lived in relatively decentralized and small-scale communities, some big men used slavery to grab power to get around broader governing ideas about reciprocity and kinship, but were still bound by those ideas to some degree. In other parts of the continent early political centralization and commercialization led to expanded use of slaves as soldiers, officials, and workers.
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