Trade routes to the Sahel

Several routes linked the Niger to the salt-producing coast as well as the kola forest of Sierra Leone and Liberia. All of those routes passed through Kankan, which was the main transit point between the Buré gold-working region and forest societies on the one hand and the Sahel on the other.

One route went from the Niger through Kankan to the Sierra Leone peninsula. The Dyula ancestors of the Vai ethnic group took this route to the Sierra Leone peninsula before slowly gravitating toward Cape Mount. A second path ran from Kankan to Musadu to Bopolu to Jondu to Gowolo to Gowolonamalo to Cape Mount.

Footnote: Massing, 1985, pp. 36-37, 41; George E. Brooks, Kola Trade and State Building: Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th and 17th Centuries (Boston, MA: Boston University, African Studies Center, 1980), p. 268; Person, 1968, p. 558; Beávogui, 2001, p. 54.