It is funny, when you see a group of people cashing in on an opportunity and you have the opportunity or ability to cash and also, you may just do so, even if there’s no integrity in the cash cow.

This is what many Africans had to face during the Atlantic slave trade business era. Joining in on the lucrative business of selling slaves.

One of the black African slave traders was a man named Tippu Tip (nicknamed Tippoo Tib), a seller of slaves and also of Ivory. Tip (not to be confused with the rapper) was originally from Zanzibar, East Africa (near Tanzania) and he was one of the first civilized men to penetrate the center of Africa.

He also explored territories nearly as large as the United States. Other explorers, including white European explorers, tried their best to follow his path in which he used to get into Africa.

Tippu Tip or Tib was a Swahili-Zanzibar businessman (as we would call it today). He was known as Tippu Tib because of the sounds that his guns made.

He was an excellent ivory trader, explorer, plantation owner, and governor, who worked for a succession of sultans of Zanzibar.

He also traded in some slaves for Zanzibar’s clove plantations. He led many trading expeditions into Central Africa, as part of the large and lucrative ivory trade by constructing profitable trading posts that reached deep into Central Africa.

This is how he pulled this off, he purchased the ivory from a central African dealer who sold it to him for wholesale. Tippu Tip was traduced by Europeans as a “slave trader” because he cut into their pockets, but his main trade was in ivory. Tippoo was a threat to European business and colonization efforts in central Africa, so they hated on him.

Once again, black people doing great things; little known black history facts.

Bro Ishe