African American 

Choose and write on one question from below. Use the question that you are attempting as the title of your essay. Discussion essay should be between 500 and 600 words long. Your discussions must include references from the assigned course readings and a Word Count at the end of your essay.

1. Discuss the contributions of Mansa Musa to the greatness of the Mali empire.

2. Using the Asante empire as a case study, discuss the role of the trans-Saharan trade in the emergence and growth of the western Sudanese polities (states and empires).

3. Discuss the contributions of iron technology to the process of state formation in Bantu Africa (reference specific polities in your discussion).

4. Evaluate the contributions of international trade to the process of state formation in the Swahili city states.