Istwa Nou

West Africa was not alone. In the Congo basin, in the middle of equatorial Africa, a second network of long-distance exchange took shape within a few centuries of the first. Its main routes were the rivers. Traders from Bantu-speaking farming and fishing communities moved goods upstream and downstream by boat along a system of waterways that reaches most of the basin. Feeder routes ran through the rainforest to the landings, and along those tracks the Batwa foraging peoples carried hides, ivory, beeswax and honey out of the forest and into the river trade. The design follows the country. The Sudan belt used donkeys and open savanna; the Congo used canoes and rivers. Savanna towns sold manufactures; the forest network sold what the forest produced. Underneath both lies the same ordinary impulse to specialise, exchange and grow rich by moving what other people want. Most world histories have not yet registered that the Congo system existed at all.