8th century – 19th century
Western Sudan, Sahel, Sahara, North Africa, and Atlantic West Africa
The staple commodities trade linked the Western Sudan to Saharan, North African, Mediterranean, and Atlantic commercial networks. It involved cloth, copper, silver, tin, lead, foodstuffs, gum, shea butter, kola nuts, and other products. The trade combined long-distance exchange with internal African commerce and connected savanna, Sahelian, forest, desert, and coastal economies.
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The Story
The Western Sudan participated in a commercial system that connected the Sahel and Sahara with North Africa and the Atlantic coast. European cloth reached Timbuktu and Gao across the desert, while Portuguese merchants exchanged cloth for locally woven textiles on the Casamance and supplied Moroccan cloth to Elmina. High transport costs and repeated changes of hands made overland imports expensive, whereas direct maritime transport allowed Portuguese merchants to sell Moroccan cloth at lower prices on the African coast.
Imported commodities included copper, silver, tin, lead, perfumes, bracelets, arms, books, and beads of stone, coral, and glass. Copper was used mainly for ornaments and came first from southern Morocco and later from the Byzantine empire. A twelfth-century caravan found in the Sahara reportedly carried about two thousand rods of copper weighing approximately one ton, illustrating the scale that metal circulation could sometimes reach.
Foodstuffs moved in several directions. Grains, sorghum, and millet were exported from the Sudan toward the Sahara for Sudanese consumption, while Arab and Berber communities in the Sahel imported wheat from North Africa, together with sugar, raisins, dried dates, and figs. Other exports included musk, spices, ambergris, ostrich feathers, hides, and kola nuts, showing that the trade involved luxury goods, necessities, raw materials, and products used in social exchange.
Three arboreal products were particularly important in the Western Sudanese trade: gum from the Sahel, shea butter from the savanna, and kola from the forest. Gum was observed near Awdaghust in the eleventh century and was exported to Andalusia; it was also brought to the Portuguese factory at Arguin in the early sixteenth century and became important in European trade on the Mauritanian coast from the seventeenth century. Shea butter was used for cooking, lighting, and soapmaking, and was exported northward.
Kola was described as the most commercialized fruit in West Africa. It grew in the forest but was consumed chiefly in the savanna and Sahel, making it a powerful driver of long-distance trade. Kola nuts could serve as valued gifts between hosts and guests or between chiefs and subjects, and their stimulant effect helped explain their popularity. Most kola remained within markets south of the Sahara rather than being exported to the Maghrib.
The commercial history of kola differed from that of gold. From the seventeenth century, as gold trade declined, kola commerce expanded in response to growing demand. The trade was primarily an internal African affair and contributed to the spread of Islam between the Sahel and the fringes of the forest. The pages also associate the Akan forest with both gold and kola, identifying these resources as principal foundations of Mali’s wealth while acknowledging uncertainty about the precise location called Biṭū.
8th century – 19th century
Western Sudan, Sahel, Sahara, North Africa, and Atlantic West Africa
The staple commodities trade linked the Western Sudan to Saharan, North African, Mediterranean, and Atlantic commercial networks. It involved cloth, copper, silver, tin, lead, foodstuffs, gum, shea butter, kola nuts, and other products. The trade combined long-distance exchange with internal African commerce and connected savanna, Sahelian, forest, desert, and coastal economies.
Continue exploring
The Story
The Western Sudan participated in a commercial system that connected the Sahel and Sahara with North Africa and the Atlantic coast. European cloth reached Timbuktu and Gao across the desert, while Portuguese merchants exchanged cloth for locally woven textiles on the Casamance and supplied Moroccan cloth to Elmina. High transport costs and repeated changes of hands made overland imports expensive, whereas direct maritime transport allowed Portuguese merchants to sell Moroccan cloth at lower prices on the African coast.
Imported commodities included copper, silver, tin, lead, perfumes, bracelets, arms, books, and beads of stone, coral, and glass. Copper was used mainly for ornaments and came first from southern Morocco and later from the Byzantine empire. A twelfth-century caravan found in the Sahara reportedly carried about two thousand rods of copper weighing approximately one ton, illustrating the scale that metal circulation could sometimes reach.
Foodstuffs moved in several directions. Grains, sorghum, and millet were exported from the Sudan toward the Sahara for Sudanese consumption, while Arab and Berber communities in the Sahel imported wheat from North Africa, together with sugar, raisins, dried dates, and figs. Other exports included musk, spices, ambergris, ostrich feathers, hides, and kola nuts, showing that the trade involved luxury goods, necessities, raw materials, and products used in social exchange.
Three arboreal products were particularly important in the Western Sudanese trade: gum from the Sahel, shea butter from the savanna, and kola from the forest. Gum was observed near Awdaghust in the eleventh century and was exported to Andalusia; it was also brought to the Portuguese factory at Arguin in the early sixteenth century and became important in European trade on the Mauritanian coast from the seventeenth century. Shea butter was used for cooking, lighting, and soapmaking, and was exported northward.
Kola was described as the most commercialized fruit in West Africa. It grew in the forest but was consumed chiefly in the savanna and Sahel, making it a powerful driver of long-distance trade. Kola nuts could serve as valued gifts between hosts and guests or between chiefs and subjects, and their stimulant effect helped explain their popularity. Most kola remained within markets south of the Sahara rather than being exported to the Maghrib.
The commercial history of kola differed from that of gold. From the seventeenth century, as gold trade declined, kola commerce expanded in response to growing demand. The trade was primarily an internal African affair and contributed to the spread of Islam between the Sahel and the fringes of the forest. The pages also associate the Akan forest with both gold and kola, identifying these resources as principal foundations of Mali’s wealth while acknowledging uncertainty about the precise location called Biṭū.