Why did Africans engage in slave trade? Did they have a choice?

Many Africans were captured and sold by other Africans. The Africans that captured them would sell them to the Europeans, who would in turn bring them to the Americas to work on plantations and do other menial work.

The Africans who complicity engaged in slave trading themselves did so because they received guns and goods from the Europeans, making it quite lucrative for both the African slave traders and European recipients of said slaves.