LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
FACTS ABOUT' KONGWA
Sn1,—Mr. Lipscomb, in his article, mentions the failure in Tanganyika to make use of advice that was to be had from Kenya for the asking. I have noticed that, in your admirably obiective series of articles on colonial topics, this feature of colonial practice has never been criticised. In West Africa, for instance, problems of administration are dealt with at the highest level by the men on the spot at the conferences of Governors which are held in one of the colonies concerned.
Technical problems in a " balkanised " area such as West Africa have, In my experience, never been so tackled. The basis of such problems, e.g., mass literacy, is, mutatis mutandis, common throughout a specific region. The methods of solving them are parochial in that successes in one area may have no effect on efforts on similar lines in another in the same region. It may be contended that the integratink influence of the Colonial Office suffices to link the diverse schemes in any given region in such fields as agriculture and education and thus ensures that a common pool of know- ledge will exist from which each colony can draw. I have not found, that this is true.
Furthermore, while the project at Kongwa may, as Mr. Lipscomb remarks, be too big for Africans to handle, it should not be forgotten that there is one African colony, the Gambia, which has for years largely existed on its groundnuts. Has all the*experience of the native growers in finis area been utilised ? African methods may be empirical, unscientific and unorthodox, but no one who has seen the yam farms in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, or who has heard agricultural officers in the cocoa areas give an expert opinion, will assert that they are ineffective.— Yours faithfully, W. M. A. JONES. The Royal School, Raphoe, Co. Donegal.
Previous page
