The word Maafa (also known as the African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement) is derived from a Swahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term refers to the 500 years of suffering of Africans and the African diaspora, through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, invasion, oppression, dehumanization and exploitation. The term also refers to the social and academic policies that were used to invalidate or appropriate the contributions of African peoples to humanity as a whole, and the residual effects of this persecution, as manifest in contemporary society.

Usage of the term Maafa to describe this period of persecution was popularized by Professor Marimba Ani's 1994 book Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora.

The persecution of Africans has been traditionally minimized or whitewashed in historiography. Conventional western historical narratives have frequently been criticized as anti-African or Eurocentric, for instance in regards to viewing centuries of persecution and disenfranchisement as a side affect of commercial enterprise. Prejudicial accounts of African societies, cultures, languages and peoples by Western scholars abound, with African and African Diaspora voices often muted or relegated to the periphery. Until the 1960s, African Americans suffered from what one historian deemed "historical invisibility".