West Africans tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as wood, mud, and grass.

The area does have a rich oral tradition, including special groups of trained men dedicated to its development and maintenance.

As oral history is always open to modification and embellishment, with no means available for checking the original version, this material must be used cautiously.

Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other sources, it does provide a rich source of information.
The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D.After that, West Africans began using Arabic themselves to record their own history.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with West Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources.