114 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



comparatively small wlien compared with the value of the products of 

 the soil and forests. For example, more than four-fifths of the exports 

 of the Gold Coast are cocoa, and more than nine-tenths of those of Uganda 

 are cotton. 



The leading products of Nigeria and Sierra Leone are those of the oil- 

 palm ; those of Kenya and Tanganyika, sisal hemp and cofEee. The 

 principal export of Nyasaland is tobacco ; of Uganda and the Sudan, 

 cotton ; and of the Gambia, groundnuts. 



This brief re\aew shows us we are considering countries to which the 

 temperate world is looking to-day, and is bound to look more and more 

 in the future, as the source of those raw materials and foodstuffs which 

 cannot be grown in the temperate zones. They are thus of peculiar 

 importance to Britain as a manufacturing country, but also to the whole 

 civilised world inhabited by persons of European race. 



Conversely the absence of iron and coal, as well as the character of 

 the population, seem to point to Tropical Africa as an area of the world 

 where manufacturing industry is not likely to develop. Consequently 

 Tropical Africa is a natural new market for the manufactured goods of 

 the temperate zones, and between Tropical Africa and the countries 

 inhabited by Europeans there is a natural complementary trade between 

 raw materials and foodstuffs of the one and manufactured goods of the 

 other. 



Thus we see that the development of the economic resources of Tropical 

 Africa is one of our duties as well as one of our rights. We undertake the 

 task from no selfish motive, but from the dual point of view of helping the 

 indigenous populations to advance in the scale of ci\Tlisation and of 

 furnishing the world with an increased supply of products which it urgently 

 requires. 



The task is complicated by two main factors : the first climate, and 

 the second the wide differences in traditions and capacities between the 

 ruling race and the native population. 



As regards climate, we have to recognise that throughout practically 

 the whole of the area with which we are dealing manual labour cannot be 

 undertaken by Europeans. In many parts of the area the climate, and 

 the dangers of disease which I include imder the heading of climate, are 

 such that even the task of supervision and leadership by Europeans is 

 often rendered difficult. 



There are in each of the five principal mainland territories of East 

 Africa comparatively small areas in which the general altitude exceeds 

 5,000 ft. above sea-level, where this generalisation does not obtain. But 

 even in these highland patches the European requires the assistance of 

 native labour in any work of development which he undertakes. 



So for the most part the role of the European in Tropical Africa, and 

 especially in West Africa, is strictly confined within definable limits. 

 The European in these areas is the administrator, the teacher — using the 

 word in its broadest sense — and the organiser of trade and commerce. 

 He is seldom, if ever, a direct producer. 



Before the advent of European rule there was astonishingly little 

 contact between Tropical Africa and the outside world. Africa was practi- 

 cally a sealed continent, both as regards knowledge and trade. But 



