Citation

Aderinto S. Can. J. Afr. Stud. 2012; 46(1): 1-22.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Canadian Association of African Studies)

DOI

10.1080/00083968.2012.659576

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article challenges a well-established assumption in the social sciences and among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that prostitution is a "new" post-colonial challenge of Africa's development that "suddenly" emerged in the aftermath of the economic and social impacts of the Structural Adjustment Programs of the mid-1980s. By uncovering the first major domestic and transnational prostitution in Nigeria between the 1920s and 1950s, I seek to connect colonial history of prostitution with what is esoterically designated in post-colonial studies and popular literature as "human trafficking". But more significantly, I demonstrate how and why the colonialists disguised domestic and transnational prostitution - also known in world politics as white slave traffic - as domestic slavery. This study observes that scholars have under-researched the interaction between global and local forces in the making of colonial Africa's politics of sex. In addition, how the politics of abolition of domestic slavery in colonial Africa dovetails with the regulation of prostitution has not received critical attention, despite the fact that the rhetoric of barbarism of human cargo featured prominently in the justification for the encroachment and colonization of the continent.