Empires In Africa
By Jerrin Jacob & Holden Rupley
Geography
The Empires
Songhai was a fishing village within the Mali Empire just how the Mali empire were formally ruled by Ghana. The songhai had their own government system and wanted to become their own empire, so they refused to pay the taxes to the Mali empire, but due to political struggles the Songhai had went on a decline.
Trade
Barriers to Trade- Africa is located near the equator making it a very hot and dry land. The Sahara desert is a major geographic feature in Africa. The Sahara is a very dry desert that is the largest hot desert in the world, and is third largest desert in the world. It is 9,400,000 square kilometers across and has very little water supply. This makes it extremely hard to trade amongst Africa's mainland. If trading took place across the Sahara the people would have to ride a camel across it or face a near impossible journey on foot. Even though Africa had the Sahara as a barrier of trade, the northern part of Africa led to a waterway to Europe.
Eastern Trading On the Swahili Coast- They developed good trading routes with Europe because of the mediterranean sea. They used northern Africa to trade with European countries because it was a straight path across the sea to Europe. Africa established trading routes which traded ivory, gold, food and slaves in exchange for pottery, porcelain and other manufactured goods with Europe.
Western Trading- Ghana was the center for trade amongst africans in grain, cattle, and metals. In the 700's camals were starting to be used to bring products from the arabic mainland into Ghana. Mali controlled all of the salt and gold trade. salt was mostly traded unless gold was traded illegally because there was no trading of gold inside the barriers of Africa because Mansa Musa (the king) owned all of the gold. salt was very important to the economy of trade because it was a large part of daily success. Songhai was a small village in Africa that was known for its fishing. It thrived on trading fish to parts of Africa.
Bibliography
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