In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,princes and other scions of West African nations wer educated in Senegal. Many of these blooded princes and their retainers were kidnapped and sold into slavery,and even some chieftans and tribal kings who went in search of their missing children found the same fate. The countries where these families came from lost some of the wisest and bravest families that could have been hugely instrumental in reforming these nations.