Page 169 - Afrika Must Unite

154 AFRICA MUST UNITE

areas. In Northern Rhodesia alone, the six largest swamps total
13,754 square miles, or six per cent of the total area. In rain
forest regions, mechanical trench diggers might be made more
use of, to improve drainage. M ango trees could be cut out, and
fields bunded and sown with rice. Efforts in this direction are
being made in Sierra Leone. Experience gained there could be
profitably put at the disposal of other African countries with
similar problems.
An essential part of what is today termed the infrastructure of
development is communications. Lord Lugard, a pioneer carrier
of the ‘white m an’s burden’, said that ‘the m aterial development
of Africa may be summed up in one word - transport.’1 Although
this is obviously an over-simplication, the development of tran­
sport on a continental basis is vital to African intercourse and
economic advancement. W hat Africa really requires is a fully
integrated transport system for the continent, properly planned
by a central organization, which will examine the relative
potentials and economics of road, rail, river, air and sea systems
in correlation with an over-all plan for inter-African trade and
progressive economic and social development. At the present
time, commerce and the exchange of goods between African
countries is small. Colonialism interrupted the interchange that
existed before its incursion and subsequently all forms of com­
munication - roads, railways, harbours - were pointed outwards,
the necessary auxiliary arms for transporting raw materials
from their African sources to their European convertors overseas.
These communications are now proving inadequate to meet
the increasing demands being made upon them by the expanding
traffic that independence has brought. All over Africa, harbours,
railways, roads and airports have become greatly overburdened
in recent years.
W hen we talk about these communications looking outward,
more is meant than that they point towards the coasts and over­
seas. Railways were deliberately constructed for taking goods
to ports planned and equipped for on-board ship-loading rather
than for both loading and unloading. Thus most of our existing
railways still consist of single track routes with a few branch and
connecting lines. They were designed by the colonial powers to
1 Lord Lugard: The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa, Blackwood 1922, p. 5.