204 



[September, 1912. 



THE LAND QUESTION IN BRITISH 

 WEST AFRICA. 



SPECIAL COMMBTTEE APPOINTED. 



Iu announcing the appointment of a Committee (with Sir Kenelm E. 

 Digby, g.c.b,, K.c, as Chairman), The Times publishes a statement of the 

 situation in its issue of 26th June by its Special Correspondent lately in 

 Nigeria :— 



" In the puisuit of various occupations the natives roam over vast 

 spaces. When the white settler comes upon the scene the demand for land 

 necessarily follows and the immemorial habits of the native population 

 are inevitably affected by the new element. Hence arise local difficulties, 

 sometimes injustice, which it is the business of the legislator to set right. 

 The legislator will be hampered ou the spot by a type of white settler 

 who contends that the native has no rights, and by a type of well meaning 

 philanthropist at home who contends that the native has all the rights. 



If the capacity of the West African Native as a Trader has be- 

 come proverbial, his capacity as an agriculturist and planter, long 

 denied by the ignorant, is now equally established. Setting aside the 

 immense production of foodstuffs required for his own sustenance, the 

 native has within recent years, with Government encouragement, busied 

 himself in meeting the growing demand for tropical produce on the part 

 of the Western world. Eleven years ago the native in Southern Nigeria 

 was urged to grow cotton, cocoa, and maize for export purposes, and in 

 that period, despite partial failures of the maize and cotton crops, the 

 export has risen from £9,000 to close upon £300,000. While for various 

 reasons the development iu considerable proportions of the cotton indus- 

 try is doubtful, and while the maize crop will always be fluctuating, 

 depending as it does upon local requirements, cocoa is certain to increase 

 largely. I have already given particulars in The Times of the remaikable 

 extension in native plantation rubber cultivation which has followed the 

 initiative of the Southern Nigerian Eorestry Department. Here again we 

 have a native industry which is only in its infancy. 



Agricultural Developments. 



In the Gold Cosst and Ashanti agricultural development iu the matter 

 of cocoa cultivation has been simply wonderf ul — there is no other word 

 for it. In less than 20 years the Fanti farmer, now joined by his Ashanti 

 colleague (but yesterday a fighting man and nothing else, but now that 

 hghting is at a discount bringing to peaceful pursuits his former warlike 

 energies), has made of the Gold Coast the premier cocoa-producing 

 country in the world, producing that article to the value of £1,000,000 

 sterling ; beating the West Indies and the Dutch East Indies and beating 

 SCto Thome. A triumph of the economic superiority of free labour over 



