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This paper analyzes sub-Saharan Africa’s long-distance economic relationships with Asia over the course of three thousand years in order to assess the influence of this trade on later development strategies in the region. Based on a partial revision of world-systems theories, this work shows that sub-Saharan Africa has long constituted an undeniable periphery to large Eastern economies, who tend to consume its raw materials. In the meantime, African intermediaries, and particularly Swahili traders (among others), reinforced an ambiguous structure through which they appropriated prestige goods from the system core to their own benefit without actually boosting local economic activity on the African continent.