The Historical and Contemporary Migration of Humans Out of Africa

This essay discusses the historical migration of humans out of Africa, tracing its roots from ancient trade to the forced migration during the slave trade era. It highlights that the large-scale migration started in the 15th century to meet labor demands in the UK and the New World, with a significant portion of the African population being forcefully displaced. The essay notes that the majority of enslaved Africans were taken from western and central Africa to countries like the UK and the USA. Furthermore, the essay concludes by observing the contemporary migration trends of Africans seeking better opportunities in first-world nations such as the UK, USA, Canada, and France.

Running head: MIGRATION OF HUMANS OUT OF AFRICA
Migration of Humans out of Africa
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

1MIGRATION OF HUMANS OUT OF AFRICA
As opined by Bertocchi (2016), the migration of people from the continent of Africa
is an ongoing process and its earliest roots can be traced back to the ancient times when the
Africans used to migrate out of the continent for trade purposes and also for better
opportunities. However, Pagani et al. (2015) are of the viewpoint that the large process of
migration started in the 15th century to compensate for the labor requirements in UK and also
the New World which was created in Africa. More importantly, as per a statistics 3% of the
entire population of Africa were forced to migrate between the years 1450 and 1600 whereas
by the end of the 17th century the percentage became more than 16% of the entire population
(Exenberger, 2016).
The majority of the African slaves who were exported out of Africa during the slave
trade age were abducted from western and central Africa and also from the other parts of the
nation which were closer to the sea shore (Bertocchi, 2016). Furthermore, the majority of
these individuals were either transported to England or to the USA were they worked as
slaves on the farms, industries and homes of the native people (Exenberger, 2016). As a
matter of fact, during this time more than 12 million Africans were forcefully exported out of
the nation of Africa to work as slaves in the UK and USA (Pagani et al., 2015). However, in
the recent times it is seen that the Africans are migrating to various first world nations like
UK, USA, Canada, France and others in search of better kind of growth and development
opportunities (Bertocchi, 2016).

2MIGRATION OF HUMANS OUT OF AFRICA
References
Bertocchi, G. (2016). The Legacies of Slavery in and out of Africa. IZA Journal of
Migration, 5(1), 24.
Exenberger, A. (2016). Migration from Africa to Europe in the age of globalization:
Historical and economic perspectives. In Africa and Fortress Europe (pp. 123-140).
Routledge.
Pagani, L., Schiffels, S., Gurdasani, D., Danecek, P., Scally, A., Chen, Y., & Mekonnen, E.
(2015). Tracing the route of modern humans out of Africa by using 225 human
genome sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. The American Journal of Human
Genetics, 96(6), 986-991.