Page 167 - Afrika Must Unite

152 AFRICA MUST UNITE

has coal reserves estimated at 4,500 million tons. Coal of coking
quality is mined at W ankie in Southern Rhodesia and low grade
coal is mined in Nigeria, the Congo and M ozambique. In
addition, coal is known to exist in Tanganyika, Northern
Rhodesia, M adagascar and Nyasaland. Iron ore is mined in
Southern Rhodesia, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. W hen
a full geological survey is carried out, further deposits may be
found. New oil deposits are also suspected. Meanwhile, oil has
been discovered in the Sahara, Nigeria, the Gabon basin and
near Luanda in Angola. The French Government certainly
seemed to be impressed with the Sahara potentialities, to judge
from the importance attached to them in negotiating the Algerian
peace settlement. Oil prospecting has been going on in Ghana,
Somalia, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, M ozambique, and
M adagascar. In recent years a methane gas deposit with a heat-
producing potential equal to 50 million metric tons of coal was
reported beneath Lake Kivu.
All these are known resources, and they are by no means in­
considerable. W hat economic possibilities will be opened up as
our whole continent is surveyed and its economic exploitation
tackled on a total basis, there is no telling. From our experience
in Ghana, where we have already discovered many new re­
sources, wre can anticipate that the economic potentialities of
Africa must be immense.
O n the agricultural plane, too, Africa is estimated to have a
vast unused potential. Crop, animal-breeding and pest-control
experiments are being carried out which will undoubtedly result
in higher and more varied output. In the timber industry, trials
are being made which should lead to a big expansion. Africa
contains about 27% of the total world forest area, and not enough
profitable use has so far been made of it. Some thirty species of
trees are now being regularly accepted in the world markets and
successful tests have been carried out in the pulping of mixed
tropical woods. A pilot pulp and paper mill has been established
near Abidjan, and there are expectations of the increased use of
tropical woods for plywood and press wood.
So much was neglected under colonialism that would even
have benefited the imperialist interests, if their concern had not
been limited to developing the best land, the most lucrative