Eight Cities of the Sahel and the Nile from Segou to Kassala, West to East

Segou was established in 1620 on the Niger River and became the seat of a Bambara kingdom founded around 1650, expanded into the Bambara Empire by 1712. It fell to El Hadj Oumar Tall in 1861 and to French forces in 1890, and is known today for pottery, bogolan mud-cloth and fishing.

Gao stands on the Niger about 320 kilometres east-southeast of Timbuktu and was a trans-Saharan trade centre described as a regional power by the 9th century. It became capital of the Songhai Empire under Sunni Ali, then declined after the Moroccan invasion of 1591 and was recaptured by French forces in 2013 after the rebel takeover of 2012.

Maroua is the capital of Cameroon's Far North Region, set in the foothills of the Mandara Mountains. The Guiziga settled the area in the 17th century and the Mofu in the 18th, and the Fulbe and Fulani population is known for embroidery, leatherwork, jewelry and pottery.

Nyala in South Darfur was chosen in 1932 by Sultan Adam Suleiman as the British Administration Headquarters in Darfur because of its water sources and topography. Its economy centres on textiles, processed food, leather goods and the gum arabic trade, and the Darfur conflict brought displaced people to the nearby Kalma camp.

El Obeid began as a caravan stop under the Musaba'at Kingdom in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Egyptian forces established the modern settlement in 1821. A railway to Khartoum and Port Sudan opened between 1909 and 1912, and the city trades gum arabic, millet, oilseeds and livestock and hosts an oil refinery established in 1996.

Wad Madani lies on the western bank of the Blue Nile about 85 miles southeast of Khartoum. The 1925 Gezira Scheme irrigation project drove its growth as a cotton and grain trading centre, and it is home to the University of Gezira, Sudan's second-largest public university.

Atbara sits at the junction of the Nile and Atbarah rivers and is called the Railway City as headquarters of the Sudanese National Railway Company. Lord Kitchener's 1898 victory over Mahdist forces here led to the Battle of Omdurman, and Sudan's first trade union formed among its railway workers in 1946.

Kassala on the Gash River was founded by the Egyptian army as a garrison town in 1834, endured a Mahdist siege and surrendered in 1886, and was held by Italy from 1894 to 1896. It is a market city known for its fruit gardens and the Khatmiyya Mosque, built in 1840.