products]
AFRICA
available, but with the risk of over-production and lower prices it is doubtful whether an increased export would be profitable. A third valuable product, but one which has not yet been made use of as it might be, is the timber supplied by the forest regions, principally in West Africa. It includes African teak or oak (Oldfieldia africana), excellent for shipbuilding; the durable odum of the Gold Coast (Chlorophom excel so)-, African mahogany {Khaya senegalensis); ebony (Diospyros ebenum); camwood (Bap/da nitida) ; and many other ornamental and dye woods. Some development of the timber industry has lately taken place on the Gold Coast, whence timber was exported in 1898 to the value of <£110,000. Valuable timber grows too in South Africa, including the yellow wood (Podocarpus), stinkwood (Ocotea), sneezewood or Cape ebony (Evxlea), and ironwood. Other vegetable products of importance are :—Gum arabic, obtained from various species of acacia (especially A. Senegal), the chief supplies of which are obtained from Senegambia and the steppe regions of North Africa; gum copal, a valuable resin produced by trees of the leguminous order, the best, known as Zanzibar or Mozambique copal, coming from the East African Trachylobium horneviannianum, and also found in a fossil state under the soil; kola nuts, produced chiefly in the coast lands of Upper Guinea by a tree of the order Sterculiaceae (Kola acuminata) ; archil or orchilla, a dyeyielding lichen {Roccella tinctoria and triciformis) growing on trees and rocks in East Africa, the Congo basin, &c. ; cork, the bark of the cork oak, which flourishes in Algeria; and alfa, a grass used in paper manufacture (Machrochloa tenacissima), growing in great abundance on the dry steppes of Algeria, Tripoli, Ac. A product to which attention has been paid of late in Angola is the Almeidina gum or resin, derived from the juice of Euphorbia tirucalli. The cultivated products include those of the tropical and warm temperate zones. Of the former, coffee is perhaps the most valuable indigenous plant. It Cultivated grows in many parts, the home of one uc s. Spec‘es pging in the Galla countries south of Abyssinia, and of another in Liberia. Cultivation is, however, necessary to ensure the best results, and attention has of late years been given to this in various European colonies. From Angola the export in 1897 reached a value of £175,000, but of this a large proportion was the produce of wild trees. Still more is this the case with the exports from Harrar and Abyssinia, the amount of which passing through the ports of British Somaliland reached a total of £119,000 worth in 1898-99. Encouraging results have been obtained in Nyasaland, which in 1898 exported coffee to the value of over £23,000, although the plantations are still in their infancy. Plantations have also been started in German East Africa, Cameroon, the Congo Free State, Ac. Copra, the produce of the cocoa-nut palm, is supplied chiefly by Zanzibar and neighbouring parts of the east coast. Ground-nuts, produced by the leguminous plant Arachis hypogcea, are grown chiefly in West Africa, and the largest export is from Senegal and the Gambia; while Bambarra ground-nuts (Voandzeia subterranea) are very generally cultivated from Guinea to Natal. Cloves are extensively grown on Zanzibar and Pemba islands, of which they are the staple products. The chief drawbacks to the industry are the fluctuations of the yield of the trees, and the risk of over-production in good seasons. Cotton, which grows wild in many parts of tropical Africa, is exported in small quantities in the raw state from Angola and elsewhere; but the main export is from Egypt, which comes third among the world’s sources of supply of the article. Sugar, which is the staple crop of Mauritius, and in a lesser degree of Reunion, is also produced in
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Natal, Egypt, and, to a certain extent, in Mozambique. Dates are grown in Tunis and the Saharan oases, especially Tafilet; maize in Egypt, South Africa, and parts of the tropical zone; wheat in Egypt, Algeria, and the higher regions of Abyssinia; rice in Madagascar. Wine is largely exported from Algeria, and in a much smaller quantity from Cape Colony; fruit and vegetables from Algeria. Tobacco is widely grown, on a small scale, but, except perhaps from Algeria, has not yet become an important article of export, though experimental plantations have been tried in various tropical colonies. Cacao and tea have also been tried in some of these, but their cultivation has hardly advanced beyond the experimental stage. The most promising cacao plantations are along the coast of Cameroon, whence the product was exported in 1898 to the value of £15,000. Indigo, though not originally an African product, has become naturalized and grows wild in many parts, while it is also cultivated on a small scale, but is not likely to become an important article of export. The main difficulty in the way of tropical cultivation is the labour question; but some races, such as the Angoni of Nyasaland, have proved good workers, while the introduction of Indian coolies is regarded in some quarters as the solution of the difficulty. For the study of economic botany, and the development of tropical cultivation, botanical gardens have been established in many of the European possessions, including the Gold Coast, Lagos, Sierra Leone, Old Calabar, Cameroon, British Central Africa, Uganda, and German East Africa. Of animal products one of the most important at present is ivory, the largest export of which is from the Congo Free State. The diminution in the number of elephants with the opening up of the remoter products districts must in time cause a falling-off in this export. Beeswax is obtained from various parts of the interior of West Africa, and from Madagascar. Raw hides are exported in large quantities from South Africa, as are also the wool and hair of the merino sheep and Angora goat. Both hides and wool are also exported from Algeria and Morocco, and hides from Somaliland. Ostrich feathers are produced chiefly by the ostrich farms of Cape Colony, but some are also obtained from the steppes to the north of the Central Sudan. Live stock, principally sheep, is exported from Algeria and cattle from Morocco. The hitherto exploited minerals of Africa are confined to a few districts only, the resources of the continent in this respect being largely undeveloped. Since Minerais the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, particularly in the district known as the Rand (1885), the output has grown enormously, until in 1898 it reached a value of over 15 millions sterling. The gold-yielding formations extend northwards through Mashonaland, which may produce a large amount in the future, and deposits may possibly be discovered in various parts of tropical Africa where ancient schistose rocks occur. In the Galla countries gold has long been an article of native commerce, and on the Gold Coast of European also. Copper is found in the west of Cape Colony, in German South-West Africa, and in the Garenganze or Katanga country in the southern Congo basin, where it has long been exploited by the natives. It also occurs in Morocco, Algeria, Darfur, Ac. Iron occurs in Morocco and Algeria (some being exported from the latter), and is widely diffused, and worked by the natives, in the tropical zone. But the deposits are generally not rich, and European iron already competes with the native supply. Coal is worked, principally for home consumption, in Cape Colony, Natal, and Orange River Colony, and has lately been dis-
