Early Trade Developmrnt - Early History Development of Trade Routes: 300 CE – 1300 CE
East African coastal cities participated in a larger Afro-Asian trade network a thousand years before Vasco Da Gama peeked around the Cape of Good Hope to find the way to sail to India. Gujarati traders were already crisscrossing the ocean for biashara with the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa. As far back as the 3rd c. CE, the banana, domesticated in India, came to Madagascar (and thence to the African continent) as part of the broad Afro-Asian/Indian Ocean trading community. By the 13th Century, Africa was well integrated in the global trading pattern. This trade also involved slave trade where slaves were acquired from the East African Coastal tribes and sold to Asian markets for use as hands on labour in their vast plantations and fields.