African states played a key role in the slave trade. Slavery was already a common practice among Sub Saharan Africans long before the involvement of the Arabs, Berbers and Europeans. There were three types: those who were slaves through conquest, those who were slaves due to unpaid debts, or those whose parents gave them as slaves to tribal chiefs. Chieftains would barter their slaves to Arab, Berber, Ottoman or European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods

-Tunde Obadina. "Slave trade: a root of contemporary African Crisis". Africa Business Information Services. Retrieved 19 September 2010.

Selling captives or prisoners was common practice among Africans, Turks, Berbers and Arabs during that era. However, as the Atlantic slave trade increased its demand, local systems which primarily serviced indentured servitude expanded and started to supply the European slave traders, changing social dynamics. It also ultimately undermined local economies and political stability as villages' vital labour forces were shipped overseas as slave raids and civil wars became commonplace. Crimes which were previously punishable by some other means became punishable by enslavement.

-Graeber, David. 2012. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.

As fashionable as it is to blame the "West" for all of societies evils, both past and present, history tells us that many of those evils existed long before Europeans made contact with them. Indeed many Native American tribes also practiced slavery long before the arrival of Europeans. The myth of the pristine paradise tainted by the arrival of Europeans is simply that, a myth.