Ancient African Economy

Weights from Carthage (ca. 200 AD)

African traders have been selling things to West Asian and Indian traders and buying things from them for at least 6000 years. And these African traders have been buying and selling things between the different parts of Africa, too. Trade has always been part of how African people live.

One of the first things that African traders sold was ivory, from elephant tusks. People in Egypt and West Asia liked to make jewelry and fancy furniture out of ivory. They also sold ostrich eggs, because they were so big. And they sold wood, from the forests. They sold hard stones like diorite and granite, and they sold gold. The African traders of Kush bought linen and cotton cloth, glass, jewelry, and perfume and wine from Egypt and West Asia (the Phoenicians were the main glass-makers of that time). Beginning in the 600's AD, these traders sold people they had enslaved to the Fatimid Egyptians, and bought wheat and wine and cloth in exchange. And they sold ivory to the Byzantine empire in exchange for glass and jewelry.