CEF.UP - ECO Seminar | Slave Trade and the Spread of Islam in Africa: Theory and Evidence

Wednesday, June 11th 2025 | 13:00 h | room 305

Slave Trade and the Spread of Islam in Africa: Theory and Evidence

Francisco Alves da Silva –  Deakin University (Australia)

"We investigate an often-overlooked legacy of the Atlantic slave trade: its inadvertent role in the spread of Islam in West Africa. We develop an overlapping generation model to study the dynamics of religious conversion in the face of a changing payoff structure, induced by the introduction of the slave trade. Islamic rulers protected Muslims against enslavement, creating an incentive for conversion among non-Muslims. Coupled with increasing private returns in the share of co-religionists and intergenerational transfer of religion, our model delivers the existence of multiple, stable steady-states for the share of Muslims in a community, theoretically rationalizing the contemporary religious landscape in West Africa. We combine this framework with newly assembled historical data on the regional presence of Islam to examine whether areas exposed to both Islamic political authority and the transatlantic slave trade exhibit persistently higher Muslim populations. Our empirical analysis reveals that communities under Islamic rule during 1500-1800 and exposed to slavery have differentially higher presence of Muslims both after the end of Atlantic slavery and today. These findings are consistent with both historical data on Islamic prevalence and contemporary survey data on religious affiliation. Instrumental variable regressions and various specification tests reinforce our findings.”

Any questions please contact cefup.sec@fep.up.pt.

“Centro de Economia e Finanças (CEF.UP) is financed by Portuguese public funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P”