Colonial Prospect
AFRICAN TRANSPORT
By BRIGADIER G. S. BRUNSKILL, C.B.E.
THE successful development of Africa for the benefit of her native peoples, for the export of her natural wealth to help
the rest of the world, and for the greater strategical security of the Western Powers, demands, as a first necessity, enormous improve- ments in transportation—i.e., ports, waterways, airways, roads and railways. The planning of new development must be imaginatiie. Some new route construction is essential, in addition to the expan- sion of existing systems, but it must be remembered that there is, and will be for many years, an acute shortage of such equipment as bulldozers, cranes, engines, signalling, equipment, wagons, rails and steel barges. There is also a shortage of labour and, above all, of money.
At present ports are the worst transport bottlenecks in Africa ; some of the busiest, such as Freetown and Dar-es-Salaam, are still only lighter ports. It must therefore be seriously considered which should have precedence—the improvement of existing ports which cannot yet adequately serve existing production, or the construction of new ones for new projects such as the East African groundnut scheme. Waterways are still the most economical form of inland transport, but they cannot be greatly extended and their traffic is slow, though their carrying capacities can be much enlarged. For example, in West Africa, given international co-operation, much fuller use could be made of the navigable pordons of the Niger in par- ticular, which would mean a saving on the road and rail projects hitherto developed by France and Britain in rivalry. Above all, the only existing Trans-African route from the West Coast, which runs via the Congo basin and the Nile Valley to Cairo with a road and rail switch from Juba to East Africa, could be enormously increased in speed and capacity by improvements on the 2,200 miles of river which constitute nearly half its total length. The i,000 miles Congo River portion could be greatly improved by the substi- tution of powerful diesel engines for woodburners in all tow boats, by the installation of lighting for night movement and by the extension of the Vici Congo railway from the present riverhead at Aketi, on the shallow tributary Itimburi, back to a new main-river
_port at Yambinga. This railway could alio be extended from its Paulis terminus to Juba on the Nile, which would cur out the need to change to road transport for these 400 miles.
Largely owing to the impulse of the war there has already been much international co-operation for the development of African airways. However, false lessons must not be deduced from the success of the Berlin air-lift. There can be no hope of aircraft being able to handle many of the cargoes required by industry in peace, and by the armed forces in war, nor should it be expected that in time of war many aircraft can be diverted from combat needs to transport work. Moreover, airways, with their rigid systems of far-dispersed stops at airfields, and their high costs of travel, do little to open up backward areas. Extension of rail and road high- ways continues therefore to be vital to Pan-African development. In many cases it must be decided whether it is preferable to construct an all-weather road only or to incur the extra expense in money, labour and equipment of immediately making a railway. Roads are more flexible, more useful for the opening up of back- ward areas by motor-buses and by local deviations, and better suited to the needs of administrators, tourists and commercial travellers. Railways, in addition to being more expensive to construct, are more rigid and. more vulnerable in war ; on the other hand, they become essential for clearing large tonnages of bulk produce in peace and are invaluable in war behind the combat zone.
The north-west corner of Africa needs the trans-Saharan road and rail links which have long been planned by the French as an extension, through Algeria, of the direct route across the Mediter- ranean. In war they might be still more valuable for drawing resources out to the West African ports, should the Mediterranean be closed to merchant shipping. It is also important to improve the lateral link in the West African Franco-British group of colonies. From this West African group across to North, Central and East Africa there is at present not a single highway. The most easterly railheads are Jos and Kano on the Nigerian railway from Lagos, the capacity of which already requires great expansion to clear local products, chiefly groundnuts. Thence, through French Equatorial Africa, there is a good road to Fort Lamy, but further east there are only one fair-weather sand-track to the Sudan railhead at El Obeid, and another, which includes many river ferries, to Bangassou on the west bank of the Ubangi, a tributary of the Congo.
Clearly a west-east highway is essential, and equally clearly on none of the alignments mentioned is a railway project, which would be at least 1,200 miles long, feasible or desirable now. There would not be enough prospective heavy goods traffic to warrant it unless the desert route to El Obeid should disclose new sources of minerals or oil. A really good road is the obvious solution. During the war the Americans wanted to build one from Fort Lamy direct to El Obeid, but it is doubtful whether this would tap any pro- ductive areas, and the political future of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is doubtful. There is much, therefore, to be said for trying to link Fort Lamy and Duala with Juba on the Nile, and with East Africa, by road highways converging to enter the Upper Belgian Congo at Bangassou, and joining the Congo-Cairo artery already referred to at Aketi. From Juba northwards to Khartoum it is at present only possible to proceed by land (instead of by air or river) in the four or five months of the year when the Nile does not overflow its banks. To-facilitate the reinforcement of Egypt in war, as well as for commercial and administrative purposes, it is surely essential that there should be at least one all-weather road through the Southern Sudan.
All the foregoing Wett African, and trans-African, potential neces- • sides have been completely eclipsed in recent publicity by schemes for more railway construction in East Africa. The most recent Colonial Office statements in the House of Commons favour a rail- way; as well as an improved "Great North Road," from Northern Rhodesia to Kenya ; the idea being to link the railhead at Broken Hill with the Tanganyikan east-to-west central line from ICigorna to Dar-es-Salaam, and with the line from Uganda, through Kenya, to Mombasa and Tanga. They also visualise another link from Broken Hill, via Lake Nyasa, to join the new " peanut " railway from the Kongwa area to the new port, Mikindani. The reasons advanced for this are partly strategical, but also that Tanga should help to export Tanganyikan products and that the Songea coal deposits should be developed for export via Mikindani.
Many urge, however, that it is strategically and commercially unsound to expand the volume of exports to the vulnerable east coast of Africa, especially in a north-easterly direction, and that it is also unwise to open tip new zones of production, with new railways • and ports, when the lack of transportation capacities on existing railways is holding up exports from existing productive zones which are themselves greatly expandable. They point to the huge tonnages of groundnuts in West Africa, and of coal and steel in Southern Rhodesia, which are held up -for lack of transport. For Southern Rhodesian exports these critics advocate a new British boo-mile railway to Walvis day in South West Africa, which would end the present dependence on the congested Portuguese Beira railway and port. Pending this construction, the Portuguese Benguela Railway to Lobito Bay on the west coast might be expanded. This Walvis Bay project was, however, disposed of by the Colonial Office spokes- man in the House of Commons as being the concern of another Government department. The obvious conclusion regarding these conflicting transportation priorities is that there should be Pan- African planning on a much more comprehensive basis. Such planning should not only decide on the scheme for development of highways over at least the next ten years, if not thirty years, but also the priority to be given to the development of fresh potential sources of raw materials or foodstuffs.
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