Trade

While some trade had always occurred, the rise of cities and empires made trade far more central to the African economy. North Africa was central to the trade of the entire Mediterranean region. Other than Egypt this trade was mostly controlled by the Phoenicians who came to dominate North Africa, with Carthage becoming their most important city. The Greeks controlled much of the eastern trade, including that along the Red Sea with Ethiopia. In this region a number of Greek trading cities were established that acted as a conduit for their civilization and learning.


The Egyptian (and later, Roman) city of Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great in 334 BC) was one of the hubs for Mediterranean trade for many centuries. Well into the nineteenth century Egypt remained one of the most developed parts of the world outside Europe.

For most of the first millennium AD, the Axumite Kingdom in Ethiopia and Eritrea had a powerful navy and trading links reaching as far as the Byzantine Empire and India. Between the 14th and 17th centuries, the Ajuuraan State centered in modern-day Somalia practiced hydraulic engineering and developed new systems for agriculture and taxation, which continued to be used in parts of the Horn of Africa as late as the 19th century.

In Southeast Africa, Swahili Kingdoms had created a prosperous trade empire, where today we can find the states of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Swahili cities were important trading ports for trade with the Middle East and Far East.[1]

For the interior of Africa, trade was far more limited. Low population densities made profitable commerce difficult. The massive barrier of the Congo rainforests were more imposing than the Sahara blocking trade through the center of the continent.

It was the arrival of the Islamic armies that transformed the economies of much of Africa. Islam had comparatively little impact on North Africa where large cities, literacy, and centralized states had been the norm. The Arabs were far more effective a penetrating the Sahara than the Christians ever were, largely due to the camel, which had carried the Arab expansion and would soon carry large amounts of trade across the desert.

Thus a series of states developed in the Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara that made immense profits from trading across the desert. The first of these was the Kingdom of Ghana, reaching it peak in the twelfth century. Soon others such as the Mali Empire and Kanem-Bornu also arose in this region. The main trade of these states was gold that was plentiful in Guinea. Also important was the trans-Saharan slave trade that shipped large numbers of slaves to North Africa.

An equally important trade was developing on the east coast of the continent as Swahili traders linked the region into an Indian Ocean trading network that brought imports of Chinese pottery and Indian fabrics in exchange for gold, ivory, and slaves.