Les relations économiques afro-asiatiques dans l'histoire globale

This paper analyzes long distance economic relationships between Black Africa and Asia through three millennia in order to assess the influence of such exchanges on later development strategies south of the Sahara. Based on a partial revision of world-systems theories, this work shows that Black Africa has long constituted an undeniable periphery of important Eastern economies prone to consume its primary goods. In the meantime, African intermediaries, particularly the Swahili traders among others, did reinforce an ambiguous structure through which they appropriated for their own sake prestige goods from the core of the system, without actually boosting economic dynamics within the African continent.