Legal scholarship concerning the crimes against humanity and exploited forced labor that characterized the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade has consistently focused on Western nation states2—in particular, the United States' obligation to pay restitution to Blacks of the African Diaspora. However, one of the most implacable voids regarding this discourse is the role that continental Africans in their governmental capacity played in ensuring that the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade flourished as an economically viable institution. This article will explore Central and West Africans' prominent legal function in the trade of human commodities. This article will also examine maritime law in the context of the West African coast and negotiations between African monarchs and slavers who represented both private financial interests, as well as those of several European Crowns from which they both mutually benefited. This paper will also demonstrate the proximate nexus of Africans' participation in the early stages of the TransAtlantic Slave trade and the harm Blacks of the Diaspora endured such as the atrocities of the Middle Passage which extended the crimes against humanity upon the shores of the Americas and the West Indies. This article concludes that African nations owe reparations to Black Americans of the African Diaspora under international law.