The geographic feature that limited the expansion of West African civilization is the Sahara Desert. This element was difficult to reach and across, thus limited effectively trades and contacts between populations. Isolation is not a good characteristics if a civilation needs other resources to grow and cannot established trade routes.
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Camels help increase trade across geographic barriers of northern Africa by carried heavier loads and traveled far without water. Camels are mammals that needs few water to be able to live. They have two big reserves where they carry all the water possible when it is possible to drink, and then they survived by adopting a series of bilogical behaviours that allows them to srvive even in the middle of the desert for days.
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Sonni Ali was able to create such a wealthy kingdom by creating trade routes under Songhai’s control, allowing the kingdom to flourish. Sonni Ali realized that trade routes are essential to the prosperity of a civilation. Wealth initially derives from trade. He successfully managed to do that, trasforming the kingdom into a thriven, flourished entity.
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Arab Muslims primarily interact with East African city-states through trade. Arab Muslim were, and still are, great trades. They come from a tradition of trade, as even before they were united their way of living was primarly trade, so they made contact with a lot of culture, the east african city-states are one of those.
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Trade affect the culture of East African citystates by attracted people from many regions to the citystates, bringing more cultural diffusion. One of the biggest effect of trade is not only the exchange of goods but also of people and culture. So, trade is beneficial because it helps a country or a place thrive by mizing culture, peeople and goods.
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One of the effects of Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca was that he forged new diplomatic and economic ties with other Muslim states. Again, trade is one of the biggest ties that countries could have together. In this case, the forge of new diplomatic and commercial ties helped Musa to achieve a thrive never experienced before.
