Trans-Sahel empires and cultural cross-fertilization

I've been reading recently a book about the comparative history of similar regions around the world, and there is a section assessing the Eurasian steppe with both the North American prairie and the African Sahel. A key point was the question as to why the Eurasian steppe was such a key factor in transmitting culture, trade and ideas from East to West and vice versa; and the American prairie and the Sahel player didn't exhibit this trait. At no point was a single power able to establish a political unity over these regions to facilitate contact and trade, a role the Mongols played in our history.

The reasoning for the limitation of the prairie are the lack of a horse and a north-south orientation that crossed a number of different climatic environments. But for Africa the author contended that the main factor was political. Expanding cultures and empires which could have played a role in the facilitation of trans-Sahel trade and communication were consistently blocked by settled and long-standing empires centred around Lake Chad such as Bornu and Kanem.

So I was wondering if it would be concievable for a nomadic empire to develop in the Sahel, creating a single band of cultural cross-fertilization akin to the Eurasian steppe. This could be an expanding West African power, for example. One possibility I like is an expansionistic Zargawa expanding both East and West under a Genghis Khan-like figure in perhaps the 10th century.

This would create an environment where there is much greater contact between West and East Africa, and likely stimulate technological, cultural and political innovation. This would be only further developed with the additional of trans-Saharan camel trade routes. This would draw sub-Saharan Africa closer into the vast web of Eurasian trade and contact.

What would this change? One possibility that interests me is the possible spread of Ethiopian Christianity across the Sahel, which will make in more difficult for Islam to expand there as well as altering the circumstances of later European-West African contact and inter-relations. Just as in OTL with Islam, it is likely that animism and odd mixes of the Christian and animist tradition would prevail in certain areas, such as among the Hausa.

I'm wondering also if this expanded trade environment would have the secondary effect of expanding East African-Asian trade and an increased trade significance of the Horn of Africa, which could spread down the coastline to the Swahili states, possibly bringing Ethiopian Christianity with it.
 
I'm not sure it's true that there was no cultural transmittal across the Sahel - after all, Islam did spread across the entire region, and the area was wracked all the way across the continent by jihadist movements at the turn of the 19th c.

But it would be hard to create a nomadic empire on the Mongol scale because there were very few nomads. The Tuareg were around, but they probably numbered only in the tens of thousands, not really enough.

Also, it's relatively easy to slip into the Sahara, where a nomad army can't operate, or south of the Sahel, where sleeping sickness would eliminate a nomad army.
 
While true, that happened more along the north-south axis, my point was for it to have happened at an earlier point in history, and along a east-west axis. There was certainly cultural trasmission across the Sahel in OTL, I'm just trying to engineer a situation where there is a lot more from an earlier point.

I think that while it would be difficult to pull off a full Mongol-style empire, something on that scale might not be needed. I think that there were quite a few more semi-nomadic peoples who could fit the bill, such as the Zargawa I mentioned. In truth, it doesn't even have to be a nomadic people per say, but rather a single imperial power of some description that was able to expand across the gap between West and East Africa.

You are right about the difficulties about operating in that narrow band, however. But it could make things more interesting, creating a cultural band of Christian-animist states with a thriving trade system that is later severely disrupted by Islamic powers crossing the Sahara on camels.
 
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