Traditional Trade Routes; Objects of Trade

Trade has always been one of the most powerful stimuli for the development of a society. In the ancient times in central Sahara (which then was not as dry as now), a powerful confederation of Garamantes emerged that controlled trade routes connecting Tropical Africa with the Mediterranean. The control over trade routes provided for the existence of more recent political organisms that emerged along the southern border of Sahara: Ghana, Mali, Kanembu-Bornu, Songai. From the south the caravans brought gold, ivory, gum; from the north, production of Mediterranean craftsmen and rock salt from Sahara were carried. A similar process took place on the eastern coast of Africa, but there the trade routes crossed the Indian Ocean, not the desert, and independent Swahili market towns, rather than enormous empires, served as intermediaries between the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians and the Africans.

Trade routs did not stop in the market towns where Arab merchants reached. Enterprising Africans converted to Islam had formed a class of merchants, and they quickly stretched the trade network into the depth of the continent. In West Africa, the cola nut that grows on short trees in the forest zone became the most important trade object. This bitter nut was always valued in West Sudan due to its tonic effect. In some languages, the word “south” literary means “the land of cola nuts”.

Some ethnic groups fare better in at trade, while others are less so. In East Africa trade is controlled mainly by the Swahili and by their rivals, the Indians. In West Sudan, the best merchants are the Hausa, the Soninke and the Maninka, and on the coast these are the Lebanese and the Syrians. The South-Eastern Maninka are referred to as Jula, which means “merchants”; this word has become their ethnic name.

Simple-hearted farmers dislike cunning merchants and often envy their riches. Sometimes, when life grows more difficult than usual, they rise and loot shops. However, when the merchants abandon their fortunes made by hook or by crook and leave the inhospitable land, the economy deteriorates, and people start regretting their deeds and dream of a return of the merchants whom they so much hated before.

When riding by the road linking Côte-d’Ivoire with Guinea,   the driver have to make the passengers get off from time to time.  Guinea. Ye. V. Perehvalskaya. 2007