A brief history of Gold in Africa and the emporium of Sofala.

It was copper, not Gold, that was considered the most important metal in most African societies, according to an authoritative study by Eugenia Herbert. Employing archaeological evidence as well as historical documentation, Herbert concluded that copper had more intrinsic value than Gold and that the few exceptions reflected a borrowed system of values from the Muslim or Christian worlds.¹

However, more recent historical investigations into the relative values of Gold and Copper across different African societies undermine this broad generalization. While there's plenty of evidence that Copper and its alloys were indeed the most valued metal in many African societies, there has also been increasing evidence for the importance of Gold in several societies across the continent that cannot solely be attributed to external influence.

In ancient Nubia where some of the continent's oldest gold mines are found, Gold objects appear extensively in the archaeological record of the kingdoms of Kerma and Kush. Remains of workshops of goldsmiths at the capital of classic Kerma and Meroe, ruins of architectural features and statues covered in gold leaf, inscriptions about social ceremonies involving the use of gold dust and objects, as well as finds of gold jewelry across multiple sites along the Middle Nile, provide evidence that ancient Nubia wasn't just an exporter of Gold, but also a major consumer of the precious metal.²

Gold objects from ancient Nubia at the Boston Museum; Bronze dagger from Kerma with gilded hilt, 18th century. BC, Isis gold pectoral from Napata, 6th century BC, earrings and ear studs from Meroe, 1st century BC-3rd century CE.

In the Senegambia region of west Africa, where societies of mobile herders constructed megaliths and tumuli graves dating back to the 2nd millennium BC, a trove of gold objects was included in the array of finery deposited to accompany their owners into the afterlife. The resplendent gold pectoral of Rao, dated to the 8th century CE is only the best known among the collection of gold objects from the Senegambia region that include gold chains and gold beads from the Wanar and Kael Tumulus, dated to the 6th century CE, which predate the Islamic period.³

Equally significant is the better-known region of the Gold Coast in modern Ghana, where many societies, especially among the Akan-speaking groups, were renowned for gold mining and smithing. The rulers of the earliest states which emerged around the 13th century at Bono-Manso and later at Denkyira and Asante in the 17th and 18th centuries, placed significant value on gold, which was extracted from deep ancient mines, worked into their royal regalia, stored in the form of gold dust, and sold to the Wangara merchants from Mali.⁴

Rao pectoral, 8th century CE, Senegal, Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop. Pendant dish, Asante kingdom, 19th century, Ghana, British Museum.

While Africa's gold exports increased during the Islamic era and the early modern period, the significance of these external contacts to Africa's internal demand for gold was limited to regions where there was pre-existing local demand.

For example, despite the numerous accounts of the golden caravans from Medieval Mali such as the over 12 tonnes of gold carried by Mansa Musa in 1324, no significant collection of gold objects has been recovered from the region (compared to the many bronze objects found across Mali’s old cities and towns). A rare exception is the 19th-century treasure of Umar Tal that was stolen by the French from Segou, which included 75kg of gold and over 160 tons of silver.⁵

Compare this to the Gold Coast which exported about 1 tonne of gold annually⁶, and where hundreds of gold objects were stolen by the British from the Asante capital Kumasi, during the campaigns of 1826, 1874, and 1896⁷, with at least 239 items housed at the British Museum, not counting the dozens of other institutions and the rest of the objects which were either melted or surrendered as part of the indemnity worth 1.4 tonnes of gold. Just one of these objects, eg the gold head at London’s Wallace collection, weighs 1.36 kg.

‘Trophy head’ from Asante, Ghana. 18th-19th century, Wallace Collection.

Gold jewelry, Wolof artist, late 19th-early 20th century, Senegal & Mauritania. Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Museum.

Domestic demand for gold in Africa was thus largely influenced by local value systems, with external trade being grafted onto older networks and patterns of exchange. Examples of these patterns of internal gold trade and consumption abound from Medieval Nubia to the Fulbe and Wolof kingdoms of the Senegambia, to the northern Horn of Africa.

This interplay between internal and external demand for gold is well attested in the region of south-east Africa where pre-existing demand for gold —evidenced by the various collections of gold objects from the many stone ruins scattered across the region— received further impetus from the Swahili city-states of the East African coast through the port town of Sofala in modern Mozambique.

At its height in the 15th century, an estimated 8.5 tonnes of gold went through Sofala each year, making it one of the world's biggest gold exporters of the precious metal.

The history of the Gold trade of Sofala and the internal dynamics of gold demand within Southeast Africa and the Swahili coast is the subject of my latest Patreon article,

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Pair of wooden sandals, covered with an ornamented silver sheet with borders made of attached silver drops, and a golden knob for support. Swahili artist, 19th century, Tanzania. SMB museum.

1. Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture by Eugenia W. Herbert

2. Black Kingdom of the Nile by Charles Bonnet pg 29, 49, 62, 65, 169-173, The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art By László Török pg 82,85, 315, 472-473, The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization By László Török pg 112-121, 457, 460, 528)

3. Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara By Alisa LaGamma pg 51-54, Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa by Kathleen Bickford Berzock pg 181.

4. The State of the Akan and the Akan States by I. Wilks pg 240-246, The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa By Timothy Insoll pg 340-342,

5. emphasis on ‘stolen’ here is to highlight how colonial warfare and looting may be responsible for the lack of significant archeological finds of gold objects from this region, considering how the majority of gold would have been kept in treasuries rather than buried. Excavations in Ghana for example have yet to recover any significant gold objects, despite the well-known collections of such objects in many Western institutions. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa by Kathleen Bickford Berzock pg 179-180.

6. From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa by Robin Law pg 97

7. the 1826 loot included £2m worth of gold and a nugget weighing 20,000 ounces, the 1874 loot included dozens of gold objects including several masks, with one weighing 41 ounces, part of the 1874 indemnity of 50,000 ounces was paid in gold objects shortly after, and again in 1896. see; The Fall of the Asante Empire by Robert B. Edgerton, Asante in the Nineteenth Century By Ivor Wilks