The Khedivate of Egypt and the Husaynid Beylik of Tunis adopted anti-slavery policies because of the British pressure to abolish the slave trade and slavery in addition to the internal causes. However, their practical measures were quite different. Although Saʿid (r. 1854-1863) and Ismaʿil (r. 1863-1879) of the Egyptian Khedivate took many actions against slavery and the slave trade, their orders or decrees lacked detailed plans before the ultimate termination of the slave trade in 1877, a result of the Anglo-Egyptian convention. As for the Tunisian Beylik, Ahmad Bey (r. 1837-1855) rapidly took measures against slavery. He prohibited the slave trade in 1841 and abolished slavery itself in 1846. While previous studies on slavery in the Middle East and North Africa have explained the circumstances and conditions related to anti-slavery in each state in the region, comparative explanations regarding the differences between the polities have been relatively scarce. This study focuses on the reasons behind the different approaches to the matter of slavery found in the Egyptian Khedivate and the Tunisian Beylik and argues that the differences of state projects and strategies were decisive. Using British and Egyptian archival sources and published primary sources, such as memoirs, chronicles, and reports, this paper compares three different conditions between the two polities: the scale of the slave trade, the presence of organized slave traders, and the government’s demand for military slaves. While acknowledging that the first two factors had some relatedness, I contend that the different policy directions between the two states mainly resulted from the dissimilar demands for military manpower. The Egyptian Khedivate continuously needed black soldiers, especially for the expansionist projects of Ismaʿil, before the debt crisis and the military defeats in the Horn of Africa, and the slave trade was the most effective way to procure these soldiers. Meanwhile, the Tunisian Beylik did not pursue expansionism, and it was willing to restrict slavery to win the favor of Britain to stave off the French and Ottoman threats. This study elaborates on the influence of such disparate concerns on the procedures of state-led anti-slavery efforts. This comparison will reveal the way that anti-slavery was adopted and adjusted as a part of reform programs and how a specific project was influenced by other state projects and main concerns of rulers in the Middle East and North Africa during the nineteenth century.