Origins of Agriculture

The first examples of agriculture in Africa are believed to have begun in the heart of the Sahara Desert, but which in 5200 BC was far more moist and densely populated. Several native species were domesticated, most importantly pearl millet, sorghum and cowpeas which spread through West Africa and the Sahel. The Sahara at this time was like the Sahel today. Its wide open fields made cultivation easy, but the poor soil and limited rain made intensive farming impossible. The local crops were also not ideal and produced fewer calories than those of other regions. These factors limited surpluses and kept populations sparse and unurbanized.


Africa thus took a very different route from the southern regions. Climatically it is closely linked to the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent and the agricultural techniques of that region were adopted wholesale. This included a very different sets of crops, such as wheat, barley, and grapes. North Africa was also blessed by one of the richest agricultural regions in the world in the form of the Nile River valley. With the arrival of agriculture the Nile region quickly became one of the most densely populated in the world, and the Egyptians home to one of the first civilizations.

The drying of the Sahara created a formidable barrier between the northern and southern portions of the continent. Two important exceptions were Nubia that was linked to Egypt by the Nile and Ethiopia that could trade with the northern regions over the Red Sea. Powerful states grew up in these regions such as Kush in Nubia and Axum in Ethiopia. From these regions ideas and technologies from the Middle East and Europe could travel to Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of these was iron working that arrived, presumably from Sudan around 1200 BC and quickly spread to West Africa and reached South Africa by the fifth century AD. Some historians believe that iron working may have been developed independently in Africa. Unlike other continents Africa did not have a period of copper and bronze working before the Iron Age. Copper is quite rare in Africa while iron is quite common. In Nubia and Ethiopia iron, trade, and agricultural surpluses lead to the establishment of cities and civilizations.

In the still more sparsely settled rest of the continent this same period sees the expansion of the Bantu speaking peoples. The Bantu expansion almost certainly began in Southern Cameroon around 4000 years ago. Bantu languages are spoken there today and there is archaeological evidence for incoming Neolithic farmers in Northern Gabon ca. 3800 BP. It is known that their expansion was extremely rapid and massive, but its exact engine remains controversial.

This is too early for iron, which appears in the archaeological record by 2500 BP. One of the early expansions of Bantu was the migration of the Bubi to Fernando Po (Bioko) and they were still using stone technology at first European contact. The difficulties of cutting down the equatorial forest for farming have led to the suggestion that the primary expansion was along river valleys, a hypothesis supported by studies of fish names. Another factor may have been the arrival of SE Asian food crops, notably the AAB plantain, the cocoyam and the water-yam. Linguistic reconstructions suggest that the only livestock possessed by the proto-Bantu was the goat.

Over the centuries the entire southern half of Africa was covered, excluding only the Kalahari desert. This expansion only ended relatively recently. In the year 1000 Arab traders show that the Bantu had not reached as far as Mozambique, and European settlers observed the Bantu expansion into South Africa under the Zulu and others.

The importation Bantu pastoralism reshaped the continent's economy. Sometime in the first millennium and equally important change began as crops began to arrive from Southeast Asia. The Indian Ocean has always been far more open to trade than the turbulent Atlantic and Pacific. Traders could ride the monsoon winds west early in the year and return east on them later. It is guessed that these crops first arrived in Madagascar, which also adopted Southeast Asian languages, sometime between AD 300 and 800. From the island the crops crossed to East Africa. They included many crops, the most important being the banana.

The banana and other crops allowed for more intensive cultivation in the tropical regions of Africa, this was most notable in the Great Lakes region, and area with excellent soil, that saw many cities and states form, their populations being fed largely by bananas.