The African Union (AU) adopted a resolution at its February 2026 summit in Addis Ababa describing slavery, deportation and colonialism as genocide and crimes against the people of Africa. Member states agreed to mark November 30 as the “African Day of Tribute to African Martyrs and Victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Colonization, and Apartheid.”
The International Labour Organization, Walk Free and the International Organization for Migration put the number of people in forced labor in Africa in 2021 at 3.8 million in their 2022 Global Estimates.
European colonial governments imposed forced labor in Africa well into the 20th century, from King Leopold II’s Congo Free State, which Belgium annexed in 1908, to French colonies, where a 1946 law ended the practice. Portugal was the last holdout, abolishing forced labor in Angola and Mozambique in 1961 and repealing its Indigenous Labour Code in 1962. Sixty-four years after the last European colonial power ended forced labor in Africa, several African governments still impose or allow it.
The U.S. State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report named Eritrea, South Sudan and Sudan among 13 governments with state-sponsored trafficking. The report covers practices such as recruiting child soldiers and imposing forced labor in government sectors. It found that South Sudan’s government had a policy or pattern of employing or recruiting child soldiers.
In its 2023 Global Slavery Index, Walk Free ranked Eritrea second in the world for the prevalence of modern slavery, estimating that 320,000 people, or about 9 percent of the population, were living in modern slavery. Eritrea’s mandatory national service is a source of forced labor. The State Department recommended that Eritrea let people choose their work and leave their jobs at will.
In Libya, a joint report published in February 2026 by the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Support Mission in Libya found that trafficking networks, often with ties to state actors, subjected migrants to forced labor and sexual exploitation and held them for ransom. Libya’s Interior Ministry runs the official detention centers described in the report. The UN found that detainees were often forced to work in degrading conditions, collecting garbage, repairing machinery, doing farm work or serving as cell guards.
