Answer: Increased demand for enslaved people.
Step-by-step explanation:
As a result of the growth in the sugar industry and plantations of the Americas, more labor was needed to farm sugar so that the increased demand for sugar could be met and the labor had to be cheap as well for more profit to be made.
To do this, the Europeans turned to slave labor. As West Africa was their primary source of African slave labor, they increased efforts to get more enslaved people from there. This led to even more population decline in West Africa as well as wars and violence that was aimed at getting more slaves.