Abstract EN:

Cooking salt was an uncommon food-stuff in precolonial time in most part of the western africa. This indispensable commodity became the matter of a busy and profitable trade and was bartered for the famous sudan'gold, black slaves and agricultural gathering or hunting produces. Geographical factors everywhere determined all the activities belonging or going together with salt's economy. For this research, our documentation is primarily acquired from books and all sorts of monographs. The salt mines or marshes which supplied west african countries were in the outskirts of these areas where people suffered of scarcity of salt. They could not be reached easily, specially they were situated in the south of the saharian area. Above all, the markettable value of salt in western sudan was created by its transportation. As for salt of plants ashes, it was produced in any area of the sudanese country; sea salt had taken a little part in the supplying of precolonial sudan progressively the sudan's salt trade got organized, from xth to xxth centuries, with specialized traders, market places and wares. Trading technologies wherewhile evolved from the silent trade to the bills of exchange. It is not easy to add up salt's accounts in old sudanese economic life. Without fail, it had wheighed heavyly in the way of living of all these western african peoples.