Countries in Africa that have societies with caste systems include Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and others.
[5][4][6] Others, such as the occupational segregation and caste-based endogamy practiced by the Ari people, have been revealed by advances in archaeogenetics to be among the oldest continuous caste systems in existence.
[31][29] The castes in the Oromo society have had a designated name, such as Tumtu were smiths, Fuga were potters, Faqi were tanners and leatherworkers, Semmano for weavers, Gagurtu were bee keepers and honey makers, Watta were hunters and foragers.
[44] According to Catherine Besteman – a professor of anthropology – the widespread purchase of non-Somali African slaves during the medieval age helped structure the complex status hierarchy among the Somalis.
[45] However, adds Besteman, the Somali people from the upper strata have also been egalitarian in matters of clan leadership, while they have included concepts of social status, inferiority and exclusion of Sáb and slaves.
The slaves are traditionally called Haratin and `Abid, and they were the lowest status endogamous castes, largely segregated oasis-dwelling black people, in the Moors society.
[53][54][55] The Haratin of Mauritania, states Joseph Hellweg – a professor of anthropology specializing in West African studies – were part of a social caste-like hierarchy that likely developed between 1300 and 1500 CE because of a Bedouin legacy.
[57][58][59] Among Hassaniya Arabic speakers in southern Morocco and Mauritania, states Sean Hanretta – a professor of African History, the term Bidan is a "caste synecdoche" that refers to Hassani (warrior) and Zwaya (clerical) clans.
[60] According to Remco Ensel – a professor of anthropology specializing in Maghreb studies – the word "Haratin" in Moroccan is a pejorative that connotes "subordination, disrepute" and in contemporary literature, it is often replaced with "Drawi", "Drawa", "Sahrawi", "Sahrawa" or other regional terms.
They principally inhabit the Sahara desert, in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.
[80] These social strata, like caste systems found in many parts of West Africa, included singers, musicians and story tellers of the Tuareg, who kept their oral traditions.
Then there are those castes of captive, slave or serf ancestry: the Maccuɗo, Rimmayɓe, Dimaajo, and less often Ɓaleeɓe, the Fulani equivalent of the Tuareg Ikelan known as Bouzou (Buzu)/Bella in the Hausa and Songhay languages respectively.
[103] It is the belief of many Igbo traditionalists that the Osus are people historically owned by deities, and are therefore considered to be a 'living sacrifice', an outcast, untouchable and sub-human (similar to the Roman practice of homo sacer).
[104] Among the Mande societies in Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast and Ghana, people are divided by occupation and ethnic ties.
[105] The Mandinka people are a West African ethnic group with an estimated population of eleven million with roots in western Sahel, in Mali, but now widely dispersed.
[109] Major populations of the Mandinka people also live in Mali, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Mauritania.
[109] Their caste system is similar to those of other ethnic groups of the African Sahel region,[116] and found across the Mandinka communities such as those in Gambia,[117] Mali, Guinea and other countries.
[121] The Soninke people are a West African ethnic group found in eastern Senegal and its capital Dakar, northwestern Mali and southern Mauritania.
[146] The endogamous slave castes were held in Temne clans as agriculture workers and domestic servants, and they formed the lowest subservient layer of the social strata.
[148][149] They have been influential in the spread of Islam to West Africa in the medieval era, later founded the vast Tukulor Empire in the 19th century under Umar Tal that led a religious war against their neighboring ethnic groups and the French colonial forces.
[159][160] The Wolof people, like other West African ethnic groups, have historically maintained a rigid, endogamous social stratification that included nobility, clerics, castes and slaves.
[171][172] The Zarma people are predominantly Muslims of the Maliki-Sunni school,[173][174] and they live in the arid Sahel lands, along the Niger River valley which is a source of irrigation, forage for cattle herds, and drinking water.
The different strata of the Zarma-Songhai people have included the kings and warriors, the scribes, the artisans, the weavers, the hunters, the fishermen, the leather workers and hairdressers (Wanzam), and the domestic slaves (Horso, Bannye).
[122][178] Some scholars such as John Shoup list these strata in three categories: free (chiefs, farmers and herders), servile (artists, musicians and griots), and the slave class.
The highest social level, states Shoup, claim to have descended from king "Sonni 'Ali Ber" and their modern era hereditary occupation has been Sohance (sorcerer).
[187][188] The Mandara society developed into a socially stratified system, with Sultan and royalty, farmers, horse breeders, artisans, iron workers and smiths forming a distinct endogamous occupation-inheriting castes.
[193][194] The Toubou people, states Jean Chapelle – a professor of history specializing in Chadian ethnic groups – have been socially stratified with an embedded caste system.
[202] The Zaghawa people, also called Beri or Zakhawa, are a Central African Muslim ethnic group of eastern Chad and western Sudan, including Darfur.
[5] The linguistic evidence suggests that stratification structure and words relating to caste system and slavery likely were shared between the many ethnic groups, and possibly some others such as the Dogon people of West Africa.
[220] However, the linguistic differences between the caste and slave systems between Soninke and northern ethnic groups of Africa such as the Tuareg people and Moors suggests that these evolved separately.