The West African economy was a subsistence economy, and therefore people were basically satisfied with the status quo and saw no point in accumulating wealth. Also in a subsistence economy, there is little need for money, and most trade was done through barter. Because there was no money, there was no wage labor. Instead, labor was created either through a system of domestic slavery or through a complex system of reciprocal duties and obligations. However, West African slavery was more like the European system of serfdom than it was like modern slavery.
Within this subsistence economy, each tribe or locality tended to specialize in certain fields of agriculture or manufacture which necessitated a vigorous and constant trade between all of them. However, within the trading centers, money had come into regular use. It usually took the form of cowrie shells, iron bars, brass rings, or other standard items of value. Systems of banking and credit had also been developed, but even those involved in money, banking, and trade had a noncapitalist attitude towards wealth. They enjoyed luxury and the display of affluence, but they had no concept of investing capital to increase overall production.
West Africa also carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world. When the Europeans arrived, they discovered, as had the Arabs before them, that the West Africans could strike a hard bargain. They had developed their own systems of weights and measures and insisted on using them. Europeans who failed to treat the king or his agent fairly, found that the Africans simply refused to deal with them again. Trade was always monopolized by the king, and he appointed specific merchants to deal with foreign businessmen. As previously noted, it was by the control and taxation of commerce That the king financed his government and maintained his power.
The strength and weaknesses of the West African economy can be seen by a cursory glance at a list of its main exports and imports. West African exports included gold, ivory, hides, leather goods, cotton, peppercorn, olive oil, and cola. While some of these items were only exported for short distances, others found their way over long distances. West African gold, for example, was exported as far away as Asia and Northern Europe. Some English coins of the period were minted with West African gold. West African imports included silks from Asia, swords, knives, kitchen-ware, and trinkets from the primitive industrial factories of Europe as well as horses and other items from Arabia. Two other items of trade became all important for the future--the exportation of slaves and the importation of guns and gunpowder.
West African manufacturing demonstrated a considerable amount of skill in a wide variety of crafts. These included basket-weaving, pottery making, woodworking and iron-working. Archeological evidence shows that West Africans were making pottery and terracotta sculpture as much as two thousand years ago. Three-dimensional forms seem to have held a particular interest for West African artists. During the last century, art critics have gone beyond considering this art as "primitive" and have begun to appreciate its aesthetic qualities. In fact, in recent years, African art has had considerable influence on contemporary artists.
The two forms of African art best known outside Africa are music and the dance. African music contrasts with European music in its use of a different scale and in concentrating less on melodic development and more on the creation of complex and subtle rhythmic patterns. Musicians used to view African music as simple and undeveloped, but now musicologists admit that African rhythms are more complex and highly developed than rhythms in European music. Africans like to sing and to develop songs for all occasions: religious songs, work songs, and songs for leisure. African singing is also marked by the frequent use of a leader and a chorus response technique. African dance, like its music, builds on highly complex rhythmic patterns. It too is closely related to all parts of the African's daily life. There are dances for social and for ritual occasions. The most common use of the dance was as an integral part of African religious rites.
African religion has usually been defined as fetish worship-the belief that specific inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits endowed with magical powers. While this view of African religion is partly true, it obscures more than it clarifies. The fetish is believed to have some powers of its own, but, in general, it derived them from its close association with a dead ancestor. Behind the fetish was the religion of ancestor worship, and the fetish is better understood as a religious symbol. Ancestor worship was also part of the African's strong family ties and his powerful kinship patterns. Behind the realm of this fetish and ancestor worship lay another world of distant and powerful deities who had control over the elemental natural forces of the universe. While this religion might be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as simplistic. It involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes, ancestors, and deities which required a high degree of intelligence.
The intricacies of theology, law, medicine, and politics made it necessary to develop a complex system of oral education. Europeans, who tended to identify knowledge with writing, had long assumed that, because there was no written language in early Africa, there could be no body of knowledge. After the arrival of Islam, Arabic provided a written form within which West African ideas could be set down.
Only recently have scholars become aware of the libraries and the many publications to be found in West Africa. Two of these books were responsible for providing historians with detailed information about the customs and social structure of the area. One was the Tarikh al-Fattiish, the chronicle of the seeker after knowledge, written by Mahmud Kati in the early fifteenth century. The other was the Tarikh al-Sudan, the chronicle of the Western Sudan, written by Abd al-Rahman as-Sadi about the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The society of West Africa was stratified in several different ways. It was divided in terms of differing occupations: farmers, merchants, priests, scholars, laborers, and a wide variety of craftsmen. The social ranking assigned to these occupation divisions varied according to the importance of each occupation.