The earliest humans were hunter gatherers who were living in small, family groupings. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like precious metals and shells across the entirety of the continent.
African economic history often focuses on explanations of poverty and obscures other aspects such as the achievements of African farmers, traders and states, including improvements in food security, and episodes of economic growth.
Ancient history Africa has the longest and oldest economic history. As soon as human societies came into existence, so did economic activity. Earliest humans were hunter gatherers living in small, family groups. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like metals and shells across the entirety of the continent were the main trades of the Berber people, lived in dry areas and became nomadic herders, while in the savannah grasslands, cultivated crops and thus permanent settlement were possible. Agriculture supported large towns, and eventually large trade networks developed between the towns.
Origins of agriculture The first agriculture in Africa began around the Sahel and the south of the Sahara Desert, which in 5200 BC was far more moist and densely populated than today. 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 scattered.
North Africa took a very different route from the southern regions. Climatically it is linked to the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent, and the agricultural techniques of that region were adopted wholesale. This included a different set 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 Nile River valley. With the arrival of agriculture, the Nile region became one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and Egypt 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 Nubian Sudan, which was linked to Egypt by the Nile and Ethiopia, which could trade with the northern regions over the Red Sea. Powerful states grew up in these regions such as Kush in Nubia (modern day Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt) and Aksum in Ethiopia. Especially from Nubia, ideas and technologies from the Middle East and Europe reached the rest of Africa.
Historians believe that iron working developed independently in Africa. Unlike other continents Africa did not have a period of copper and bronze working before their 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.
The Bantu expansion
Ordinarily, in the sparsely populated areas, this same period saw the expansion of the Bantu speaking peoples. The Bantu expansion 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 c. 3800 BC. It is known that Bantu expansion was massive and extremely rapid, but its exact engine remains controversial. This period predated iron, which appears in the archaeological record by 2500 BC.
One of the early expansions of Bantu was the migration of the Bubi to Fernando Po (Bioko). They were still using stone technology at first. 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 southeast-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 with the group, excluding only the Kalahari desert. Their expansion only ended relatively recently. In the year 1000, Arab traders described 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, yet there's no archaeological evidence that supports their claims instead on the contrary the evidence indicates Bantu speakers's presence very much earlier by over 1800 years and over 1400 years before the first European settlement in the South African regions of Mozambique and South Africa respectively.
The importation Bantu pastoralism reshaped the continent's economy. Sometime in the first millennium, an 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 African Great Lakes region. 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, an area with excellent soil, that saw many cities and states form, their populations being fed largely
Trade routes
While some level of trade had been ongoing, the rise of cities and empires made it far more central to the African economy. North Africa was central to the trade of the entire Mediterranean region. Outside of 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 along the Red Sea with Ethiopia. In this region a number of Greek trading cities that were established 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 19th century Egypt remained one of the most developed parts of the world.
Nubia in Sudan likewise traded with interior African countries such as Chad and Libya, as well as with Egypt, China, India and the Arabian peninsula.
For most of the 1st 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 Ajuran Sultanate 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.
On the east coast of the continent Swahili traders linked the region into an Indian Ocean trading network, bringing imports of Chinese pottery and Indian fabrics in exchange for gold, ivory, and slaves. Swahili Kingdoms created a prosperous trade empire, where occupied the territory of modern-day Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Swahili cities were important trading ports for trade with the Middle East and Far East.
In 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. Though Islam had comparatively little impact on North Africa where large cities, literacy, and centralized states had been the norm, Muslims were far more effective at penetrating the Sahara than Christians had been. This was largely due to the camel, which had carried the Arab expansion and would soon after carry large amounts of trade across the desert.
A series of states developed in the Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara which made immense profits from trading across the Sahara. The first of these was the Empire of Ghana, reaching it peak in the 12th century. Soon, others such as the Mali Empire and Kanem-Bornu, also arose in the region. The main trade of these states was gold, which was plentiful in Guinea. Also important was the trans-Saharan slave trade that shipped large numbers of slaves to North Africa.
600–1600 AD
Many wealthy empires grew around coastal areas or large rivers that served as part of important trade routes. The kingdoms of Mali and Songhai Empire grew along the Niger River between 1200 and 1590. Berber traders from the Sahel—a region south of the Sahara Desert—traded dates, copper, horses, weapons and cloth that they brought from north Africa in Camel trains. Trade with the Berber people, and other groups, drove the growth of the Ghana empire, which traded its gold, kola nuts, and slaves. West Africans created a demand for salt, which was collected at desert oases, and which they used to preserve food as well as for seasoning it.
In 1324, Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, made a historically famous Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. There was an enormous group organized to undertake the Hajj with the king. It included "60,000 men, including 1200 servants" and records show that Mansa Musa gave out so much gold in Egypt, that its economy became depressed.
Between 1000 and 1500, the forests of West Africa also became part of trade networks, particularly under the reigns of the Yoruba kings. Ifé was a vital trade town, along the route from the tropical forests to Djenné, a major trade centre in Sudan, near other large trade cities such as Timbuktu and Gao. Ifé's location also placed it near Benin and the Atlantic Ocean. Yoruba civilization was supported by cities surrounded by farmed land, but extensive trade development made it wealthy.
By 1000, the Bantu language-speaking people of Zimbabwe and Southern Africa developed extensive overseas trade with lands as far away as China and India, from which they received porcelain, beads, and Persian and Arab pots. They traded domesticated beef (rather than meat from game animals), iron, and ivory and gold. The city of Great Zimbabwe, founded around 1100, was the centre of the Shona kingdom until around 1400.
Much trade in the forest kingdoms was done at the local level, typically by ordinary Yoruba people at local markets. In some towns these were held every 3 or 4 days. Cloth, vegetables, meat, and other goods were traded, and paid for using small seashells called cowries which were imported from East Africa. Bars of copper and iron, called manilas, were produced in standard shapes to be used as currency. Other items used in trade as a form of currency included salt, cloth, and bars of gold.
Trade with the Middle East had begun as early as ancient Egypt. Islam was introduced to the Horn region early on from the Arabian peninsula, shortly after the hijra. Zeila's two-mihrab Masjid al-Qiblatayn dates to the 7th century. The spread of Islam brought Arab traders as far as Morocco. The Adal Sultanate in the Horn region also maintained bilateral relations with the Ottoman Empire. The institutional framework for long-distance trade across political and cultural boundaries had long been strengthened by the adoption of Islam as a cultural and moral foundation for trust among and with traders.