West Africa

For a thousand years the region's centre of gravity was inland. Ghana (Wagadu), from about the 4th century, taxed gold coming north from the Bambuk and Bure fields and salt coming south from the Sahara. Mali, founded by Sundiata Keita in the 13th century, controlled the same trade; Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 put West African gold on European maps. Songhai, ruled from Gao, was the largest of the three until a Moroccan army destroyed it in 1591.

Timbuktu, Djenné, Gao, Agadez, Kano and Chinguetti became cities of scholarship and trade, linked by camel caravans to Morocco, Libya and Egypt. Further south, forest kingdoms grew on kola, gold and later the Atlantic trade: Ife and Benin in today's Nigeria, the Asante in Ghana, Dahomey in Benin, the Mossi kingdoms in Burkina Faso.

Nineteenth-century jihads — Sokoto in northern Nigeria, Massina in Mali, the Fouta Djallon and El Hadj Umar's Tukulor empire — spread Islam among the Fula and Hausa and created new states that colonial armies then conquered.

Portuguese ships reached Senegal in the 1440s and the Gold Coast by the 1470s, building Elmina castle in 1482. Over four centuries, European companies bought millions of enslaved people along what they called the Slave Coast, Gold Coast and Grain Coast. Gorée, Cape Coast, Elmina, Ouidah and Bunce Island are the memorial sites today.

Abolitionist Britain founded Freetown in 1792 for freed slaves; American colonisation societies founded Liberia in 1822, independent since 1847. In the 1880s–1890s European powers partitioned the interior: France took most of it as French West Africa, governed from Dakar; Britain held Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and The Gambia; Portugal kept Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.

Independence arrived in a rush: Ghana first in 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea in 1958 after voting no to France, most of the rest in 1960, and Guinea-Bissau only after an armed struggle ending in 1974. The colonial split survives in language (French, English, Portuguese), in the CFA franc and in the borders every trip crosses.

The Economic Community of West African States was founded in Lagos in 1975. Its 1979 protocol on free movement lets citizens of member states cross borders without visas for up to 90 days; in practice checkpoints and informal fees still slow travel. ECOWAS also sends peacekeepers — to Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s and to The Gambia in 2017 — and suspends members after coups.

The CFA franc dates from 1945. Eight countries use the West African version, issued by the BCEAO in Dakar and pegged to the euro with a French guarantee. In 2019 leaders announced its reform into the 'Eco'; France left the central bank's board, but the new currency has not appeared, and critics call the CFA a colonial relic.

After coups in Mali (2020, 2021), Guinea (2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023), ECOWAS imposed sanctions and threatened force in Niger. The three Sahel juntas expelled French troops, turned to Russian partners, formed the Alliance of Sahel States in 2023, made it a confederation in 2024 and left ECOWAS on 29 January 2025. ECOWAS has kept free movement for their citizens while terms are negotiated. Guinea-Bissau's army took power again in November 2025.

Climate bands run east–west: Sahara in the north, Sahel steppe, Sudanian savanna, then the humid coast. The Niger rises in Guinea's highlands and loops through Mali and Niger to Nigeria's delta; the Senegal and Gambia rivers rise in the same Fouta Djallon, which is why Guinea is called the region's water tower.

From roughly December to March the Harmattan, a dry north-east wind off the Sahara, carries fine dust as far as the coast: skies turn white, flights can be delayed, and nights inland turn cool. The rains come with the West African monsoon from the south-west, arriving on the Gulf of Guinea coast around April and reaching the Sahel only in July; the Upper Guinea coast — Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia — is among the wettest places in Africa.

Yellow fever is endemic across the region, which is why so many countries demand the certificate; the vaccine gives lifelong protection and is recognised for life on the certificate. Malaria is the bigger everyday risk, and Lassa fever and, in 2014–16, Ebola have struck Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Griots — jeli in Mande languages — have kept genealogies and epics for centuries, playing the kora, balafon and ngoni. Out of them and out of the Atlantic came modern sounds: Senegalese mbalax, Malian desert blues, Ghanaian highlife, Nigerian Afrobeat and today's Afrobeats, which is now a global pop genre.

Islam dominates the Sahel and the north-west, often through Sufi brotherhoods such as the Mourides and Tijaniyya; Christianity is strong on the coast from Ghana to Nigeria; and traditional religions persist everywhere. Vodun (voodoo), born in the kingdoms of Dahomey and the Ewe and Fon lands, is an official religion in Benin, celebrated every 10 January.

The shared bowl of rice with sauce unites the region, with endless variation: thiéboudienne in Senegal, benachin in The Gambia, and jollof rice, whose best version is argued over by Ghana and Nigeria. Peanut stews, cassava leaf, palm-nut soup, grilled fish and brochettes, attaya or Lipton tea, bissap and ginger juice are the common vocabulary.