Vocabulary & Key Terms:
- City
- Gao
- Ghana
- Gold
- Islam
- Jenne-Jeno
- Kingdom
- Kumbi-Saleh
- Literacy
- Mali
- Manuscripts
- Niani
- Sahel
- Savannah
- Sahara
- Songhai
- Stereotype
- Timbuktu
- Trade
- Urban settlement
- Urbanism
- Wealth
Student Context:
For over two thousand years, there have been major cities in West Africa, especially in the Sahel region South of the Sahara and along the Niger river. Yet, if you were to ask many people what comes to mind when they think of Africa it would likely not be an image of an urban metropolis. This is in part due to common stereotypes. The real facts around the development of African people and countries point to great cities that reflect a high level of complex societies and scholarship that was achieved by West Africans. Studying these cities reveals aspects of people’s cultures, knowledge, literacies, religions, and economic activities.
People moved to the region of the Sahel when the Sahara began to dry up about 5,000 years ago. There is evidence of early urban settlements around 800 to 400 BCE and of first cities from 500 BCE to 400 BCE. The cities of Jenne-Jeno, Gao, and Timbuktu are situated on or near the Niger River. These cities were important places in the empires of Ghana (500-1235), Mali (1235-1469), and Songhai (1469-1591). They were also significant in the ways that they were connected with other world regions such as Europe, Arabia, and Asia from a very early period. Archeologists have found artifacts such as glass beads that came all the way from Asia and Rome.
These cities were reflective of the high level of society that was attained in West Africa. In cities such as Jenne-Jeno, one of the oldest cities in the region, people smelted iron to produce high quality goods. In Timbuktu, a city at the Niger river bend, people wrote thousands of manuscripts that filled libraries. These manuscripts covered art, medicine, philosophy, science and religion and ensured that the history and scholarship of the past is accessible until today. Gao, an important historic city and capital of the kingdom of Songhai, is also still a bustling city on the Niger river today.
These historic cities were just the beginning. In the present day, the continent of Africa is now home to fifty four different countries, each of which is made up of rural, suburban and urban areas. Currently, 95 million inhabitants of Africa live in large urban areas and over 600 million more live in smaller urban centers.