Answer:
gold and salt
Step-by-step explanation:
This empires which occupy the same west-african region over the course of history made good trades with their national resources.
- the kindom of ghana from III to XI century
- the kindom of Mali XIII to XV century
- the songhai empire from XIV to XVI century
They represented different ethnics groups and religion but all had in common the weel use of their natural resources to trade with europeans and arabia
They songhai also manage to take a grab on the silk route once the ottoman conquer the byzantine empire and closed the traditional route trought the meditarrean for europeans.