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paddy areas in East Africa. The cultivation of more ricc in British Guiana

is bound up with large scale irrigation, and the settlement of workers from

outside the Colony in the rice-growing areas. It is therefore likely to be

a fairly slow procces. In North Borneo they are hoping that the output of

rice will be doubled within five years time by the drainage and irrigation of

the existing rice-growing areas, which will have the effect of bringing more

land into production.

1.

It is sometimes forgotten, in spite of the difficulty of obtaining meat

from the sterling area, that the whole of British Africa only sustains about

25,000,000 poor quality cattle. If we can diminish the ravages of the tsetse

fly, and encourage the establishment of canning factories there is a prospect

of an immonse increase in the size and quality of herds.

In a

But the practical difficulties in the way of rapid development are

formidable, and we must not expect quick returns. The chief obstacle to

rapid development is the lack of basic capital equipment in the Colonics.

In Africa, especially, this lack is most keenly felt in transport.

highly developed country like the United Kingdom, it is possible to open a

factory or a new development arca, and very few additions will be required

to the existing transport system.

The opening of a new development area in

the Colonics, however, nearly always involves large-scale now transport

For example, a facilitics, and the building of roads and railway lines.

line to a new lead-producing area in Tanganyika, over 150 miles long, has

recently been completed this has to bo quite a normal procedure in Africa.

It was, I think, Livingstone who, half a century ago, uxpressed the

opinion that any cconomic development over 100 miles from the coast line of

Africa is inpracticable. While that is no longer true, his dictum

The necessity illustrates the special difficulty of development in Africa.

for rail and road building would in any case delay large scale now develop-

mont, but the delay is accentuated by the shortage of the types of capital

equipment, such as iron and steel and cement, which are needed in largo

quantities for such construction. This shortage means that it is not

possible