The most significant imports into Africa during the trans-Atlantic trade were money, firearms, alcohol, iron goods, and textiles in exchange for slaves. Money could take the form of cowrie shells, iron bars, or European coins, and textiles themselves could be used as currency. Those African merchants and kings who were already rich tended to accumulate more of this wealth, but the presence of such artefacts at all levels of society testify to the wide-reaching influence of the slave trade. Although this exchange provided short-term wealth and prosperity for powerful coastal kingdoms, in the long run, reliance on European capital and other imports was detrimental to the African economy. Selling Africans meant a shortage of labour, and European imports tended to undercut African industry, fostering reliance on foreign goods which was compromised after the abolition of slavery. The export of labour for manufactured goods in an early form of colonial exchange had the effect of reducing Africa to the subject part of the economic system of Europe and the New World. With the abolition of the slave trade, monies entering Africa, especially cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean, were significantly reduced. This was disruptive to the established kingdoms who relied on the slave trade for cash, as there was no export yet extensively developed to match the lost value of slave shipments. However, the social gain achieved by no longer exporting labour to the New World, as well as the later development of exports such as palm oil, cocoa, and groundnuts offset the loss of imported currency.

Also important is the fact that slavery within Africa was a far reaching phenomenon, which was expanded and altered by contact with Europeans, resulting in an increased use of slaves within Africa. As more slaves were accumulated, domestic models of slavery were transformed into more of a profit-based, plantation system, although few African slaves worked the dawn to dusk routine found in the Americas and Caribbean. As well, the abolition of the trans-Atlantic trade did little to stop the trans-Saharan trade of slaves into the Middle East and Asia, or the lively illegal trade with European vessels, which persisted for more than fifty years after the trade had been officially abolished. Interestingly, when European powers began conquering Africa in the late nineteenth century, their armies were largely made up of slaves, purchased for the army, and often rewarded for their service with slaves of their own, suggesting that, while slavery had been abolished in Europe, Europeans were not averse to taking advantage of the African trade to acheive their own ends in the country, and ignoring the moral implications of such actions.

The profitability of the slave trade to Europeans has been debated by historians, yet even if this aspect is contentious, the productivity of slave labour is undeniable. Further, the unpaid labour of millions of people has been linked, directly or indirectly, to the rise of European industrialisation, capitalism, the scientific revolution, rapid population growth, huge migrations, and changing social roles for men, women, and children, to name just a few. For example, one historian has suggested that the increase in British textile exports to West Africa during the eighteenth century, in order to pay for increasingly expensive slaves, was a factor which lead to British industrialisation. The benefit to European nations from new crops, especially sugar, owed its development and expansion to the labour of African slaves, at the expense of Africa and the slaves themselves. It is difficult, therefore, to underestimate the benefits gained from the use of slaves in the New World.

For the slaves themselves, the economic gains were non-existent, as they were not allowed to own property or pass anything to their children or relatives. Even after gaining their freedom, economic self-sufficiency was difficult to achieve. Few ex-slaves were able to establish their own farms, and especially in the Caribbean islands, where land was relatively scarce, it was even more difficult. Those freed slaves who did have the resources to prosper after emancipation were often hindered by racial prejudice and outright violence. One ex-slave, Pierce Harper, described the methods used by the Klu Klux Klan, a terrorist group organised after the American Civil War in 1866:

“After us colored folks was considered free and turned loose, the Klu Klux broke out. Some colored people started to farming and gathered old stock. If they got so they made good money and had a good farm, the Klu Klux would come and murder ‘em. [...] There was a colored man they taken. His name was Jim Freeman. They taken him and destroyed his stuff and him ‘cause he was making some money. Hung him on a tree in his front yard, right in front of his cabin...”