[2] Throughout the 19th century the Kel Awey controlled the central of three main trade routes from the West African Sahel to the Mediterranean.
Kel Awey caravans carried hides, gold, ostrich feathers and slaves north from the borders of the Sokoto Caliphate, beginning in Kano, Zinder, Agadez, the Air, to Ghat and Ghadames.
This trade was supplemented by grain grown in the fertile Air by bonded servile Tuareg classes, conquered communities, and slaves working plantation estates witnessed by Barth.
[4] From the date plantations and salt basins of the Kaouar, huge caravans transported good south to Zinder and Kano.
After participating in a number of rebellions against French rule and being particularly hard hit by a series of famines in the second decade of the 1900s, their noble and warrior clans were almost destroyed, and some others of their constituent elements have been largely subsumed by other Toureg "Kel"s. The Kel Awey remain powerful in the central Aïr Massif, especially in the Bagzane plateau.