Ghana Month: How salt became more valuable than gold in West Africa

The Trans-Saharan Salt and Gold Trade was the major economic and cultural exchange between North Africa and West Africa, beginning around 500 BCE and continuing until the 1800s.

The trade involved camel caravans transporting goods across the Sahara Desert and, in the process, helped spread Islam from North Africa to West Africa, as well as ideas that influenced art and architecture, and cultural practices.

Around 500 BCE, the Berbers, an indigenous ethnic group from North Africa, organised the trade by acting as middlemen between North Africa and West Africa.

The Berbers traded salt, but they also brought luxury items south, such as glassware and fine cloth south to West Africa. In exchange, West Africa sent ivory, copper, animal hides, iron, and cereals north. Salt, however, dominated the trade because of its value in maintaining health, preserving food, and in some areas as a currency. Because of its value in West Africa, that region, in exchange, sent gold dust north along the emerging trade routes.

The Trans-Saharan Gold trade grew dramatically in the seventh century when Mediterranean economies expanded their use of gold.

During the eighth and ninth centuries, Arab merchants operating in southern Moroccan towns such as Sijilmasa bought gold from the Berbers who had traded salt for it with small West African states. The major trade routes, however, traveled through Ghana, and eventually it became the first of several West African empires to emerge because of it.

By the 10th Century, the Salt and Gold trade had become the center of the economy for the Empire of Ghana. However, the salt mines had shifted from North Africa to the northern edge of the Empire where Sanhaja Berbers mined it at Awlil and Taghaza.

The salt was taxed and transported through the Ghanian city of Audaghost and the Ghanian capital city, Kumbi-Saleh. The tax allowed Ghanian rulers to generate most of the revenue for the Empire through trade. By this point, salt was often exchanged pound for pound for gold mined both in Ghana and other areas of West Africa.

Eventually the Empire of Ghana collapsed partly because the trade routes shifted eastward. By the 1300s the Mali Empire emerged to dominate the Trans-Saharan trade through cities such as Timbuktu and Djenné.

When Mali fell, the Songhai Empire emerged to dominate the trade through its capital at Gao. Eventually Moroccan leader Muhammad al-Mahdi attempted to control the salt trade directly with an unsuccessful invasion of Songhai in 1591.

The Trans-Saharan Salt and Gold trade continued after the fall of Songhai and largely fell into the hands of the Kanem-Bornu Empire around Lake Chad.

No other West African empire, however, could dominate the trade as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai had done for centuries. In fact, when Malian emperor Mansa Musa made his famous pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 1324, the wealth of Mali generated by the Salt and Gold Trade, was fully on display making him by some estimates, one of the richest rulers in the world. As the Trans-Saharan trade continued between 1600 and 1800, enslaved people from West Africa would replace salt and gold as the most valuable trading commodity.