What different types of economic, social, and political structures were found in the kingdoms and states along the west coast and in the Sudan?

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The Oba of BeninThe oba’s palace walls were decorated with bronze plaques that date from about the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This plaque vividly conveys the oba’s power, majesty, and authority. The two attendants holding his arms also imply that the oba needs the support of his people. The oba’s legs are mudfish, which represent fertility, peace, well-being, and prosperity, but their elongation, suggesting electric eels, relates the oba’s terrifying and awesome power to the eel’s jolting shock. (National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria/photo: André Held/akg-images)

IIN MID-FIFTEENTH-CENTURY AFRICA, Benin and a number of other kingdoms flourished along the two-thousand-mile west coast between Senegambia and the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Guinea. Further inland, in the region of the Sudan, the kingdoms of Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, and Hausaland benefited from the trans-Saharan caravan trade. Stateless societies such as those in the region of Senegambia existed alongside these more centralized states. Despite their political differences and whether they were agricultural, pastoral, or a mixture of both, West African cultures all faced the challenges presented by famine, disease, and the slave trade.