“Travelers,” says Buecher, “have often observed this tribal or local development of industrial technique.  ‘The native villages,’ relates a Belgian observer of the Lower Congo, ’are often situated in groups.  Their activities are based upon reciprocality, and they are to a certain extent the complements of one another.  Each group has its more or less strongly defined specialty.  One carries on fishing; another produces palm wine; a third devotes itself to trade and is broker for the others, supplying the community with all products from outside; another has reserved to itself work in iron and copper, making weapons for war and hunting, various utensils, etc.  None may, however, pass beyond the sphere of its own specialty without exposing itself to the risk of being universally proscribed.’”

From the Loango Coast, Bastian tells of a great number of centers for special products of domestic industry.  “Loango excels in mats and fishing baskets, while the carving of elephants’ tusks is specially followed in Chilungo.  The so-called Mafooka hats with raised patterns are drawn chiefly from the bordering country of Kakongo and Mayyume.  In Bakunya are made potter’s wares, which are in great demand; in Basanza, excellent swords; in Basundi, especially beautiful ornamented copper rings; on the Congo, clever wood and tablet carvings; in Loango, ornamented clothes and intricately designed mats; in Mayumbe, clothing of finely woven mat-work; in Kakongo, embroidered hats and also burnt clay pitchers; and among the Bayakas and Mantetjes, stuffs of woven grass."[46]

A native Negro student tells of the development of trade among the Ashanti.  “It was a part of the state system of Ashanti to encourage trade.  The king once in every forty days, at the Adai custom, distributed among a number of chiefs various sums of gold dust with a charge to turn the same to good account.  These chiefs then sent down to the coast caravans of tradesmen, some of whom would be their slaves, sometimes some two or three hundred strong, to barter ivory for European goods, or buy such goods with gold dust, which the king obtained from the royal alluvial workings.  Down to 1873 a constant stream of Ashanti traders might be seen daily wending their way to the merchants of the coast and back again, yielding more certain wealth and prosperity to the merchants of the Gold Coast and Great Britain than may be expected for some time yet to come from the mining industry and railway development put together.  The trade chiefs would, in due time, render a faithful account to the king’s stewards, being allowed to retain a fair portion of the profit.  In the king’s household, too, he would have special men who directly traded for him.  Important chiefs carried on the same system of trading with the coast as did the king.  Thus every member of the state, from the king downward, took an active interest in the promotion of trade and in the keeping open of trade routes into the interior."[47]