The views expressed in these episodes are those of the facilitators and the facilitators alone. They do not reflect any company or businesses. 

Standing on an auction block in chains, an African man in good health could sell for over $1,200 in New Orleans in the decade before the US Civil War. A girl of nine or 10 could fetch $1,400 under the right market conditions. Pricing took into account a man’s strength or a girl’s ability to bear children for resale.

Approximately 12.5 million people were enslaved and taken from Africa, according to a widely accepted figure from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, but some estimates argue that as many as 20 million people were enslaved. So you do the math. 

The cost of the human lives lost touches only part of the art, jewellers, money, and economic wealth stolen, and continues to be stolen from African nations by foreign “investors”. 

In this episode we discuss what that means, and what we feel we’ve lost.