Medieval Africa
Discover medieval Africa — an era of powerful empires, trans-Saharan trade, Indian Ocean commerce, and cultural achievements that challenge outdated narratives.
Medieval Africa (c. 500–1500 CE) was an era of remarkable political, commercial, and cultural achievement that challenges the outdated and racist narrative of Africa as a continent without history. During this period, African states and trading networks rivaled and often exceeded those of contemporary Europe in wealth, territorial extent, and intellectual sophistication.
West Africa produced a succession of powerful empires — Ghana, Mali, and Songhai — that controlled the trans-Saharan gold and salt trade and built cities like Timbuktu into major centers of Islamic learning. East Africa's Swahili coast developed a string of cosmopolitan trading cities — Kilwa, Mogadishu, Mombasa — that connected Africa to the Indian Ocean commercial world. Great Zimbabwe's massive stone enclosures testified to the wealth generated by the gold trade between the interior and the coast.
Medieval Africa was deeply connected to global networks. Islam spread across the Sahel and down the East African coast through trade rather than conquest. African gold fueled Mediterranean economies. Ethiopian Christianity maintained connections with the wider Christian world. The continent was not isolated — it was a full participant in the medieval global economy, and its contributions to world history deserve the same attention given to contemporary Europe and Asia.
Lessons covering this topic
Browse all lessons →The Trans-Saharan Trade
Gold, salt, and ideas across the desert.
Great Zimbabwe & East African Trade
Stone cities and Indian Ocean commerce.
Mali, Songhai & Mansa Musa
West African empires and a ruler whose wealth astonished the medieval world.