Nigeria and its tin fields

by Albert Frederick Calvert

The cultivation of food stuffs has increased; new markets have been established, and the present safety of the roads has greatly stimulated the internal trade of the country. A great improvement in the export trade has followed the extension of the Baro-Kano Railway. To the north of Minna there is a most extensive area of shea butter trees, but very little of the produce of this area has so far been placed on the market, partly on account of the cost of transport, and partly owing to the reluctance of the pagans to have intercourse with markets outside their districts. The construction of the railway has done much towards gaining the confidence of these people, and the reduction in the cost of transport, consequent upon the completion of the railway, will render it possible to place profitably this sylvan produce on European markets. Further north the railway will pass through the rich agricultural and stock-raising Lausa provinces, which at present export live-stock, skins, and potass by means of annual caravans. The idea that Northern Nigeria is an especially unhealthy place for European residents is scarcely borne out by the total death-rate of roughly twenty per thousand, calculated on the average resident European population; but the proportion of officers invalided home is still large, though it is much smaller than it was a few years ago, when less satisfactory sanitary conditions prevailed at the stations.

Although the addition of the Nigerian Protectorates to the Empire is primarily due to the prescience and enterprise of the Niger Company, that corporation has no monopoly of trade within their boundaries nor any special advantage over other traders. It takes its chances against rival firms in the many spots in which it comes into competition with them. At Gana Gana, for instance, the company’s first station beyond Burutu, the German firm of Bey & Zimmer has a depôt. John Holt & Co., E. H. Stern & Co., J. T. Palmer & Co., Pagenstecher, and the British Cotton Growing Association are all represented in Nigeria, and the firm of G. W. Christian & Co. has established important trading stations at most of the principal towns on the river. As recently as 1904 Messrs. Christian started operations in Nigeria at a small place named Proropro on the left bank of the Niger; to-day they have branches at Forcados, Burutu, Onitsha, Illah, Illushi, Idah, and Lokoja, and at all these centres they not only conduct a large cash and barter trade, but undertake equipments and accept commissions, and cater in every way for the requirements of both Europeans and natives. The extraordinarily rapid rise and progress of this firm is almost entirely due to the exceptional qualifications for the trade possessed by the principal, Mr. George William Christian, who was born in Liverpool in 1872, and who, from the early age of fifteen has been associated with West Africa, and in twenty-five years has acquired a thorough experience and first-hand knowledge of the British and native needs of the Protectorates.

PARTICULARS OF COMPANIES WORKING TIN PROPERTIES IN NORTHERN NIGERIA

CHAMPION GOLD REEFS OF WEST AFRICA, Ltd.

Capital.—£50,000, in 200,000 shares of 5s. each; all are issued and fully paid.

Directors.—S. R. Bastard (Chairman), F. N. Best, Sir Horace C. Regnart, John Waddington.

Secretary.—Newman Ogle.

Offices.—Friars House, New Broad Street, E.C.

To this company belongs the credit of being one of the first to appreciate the almost unlimited opportunities the tin fields of Northern Nigeria offer for the employment of British capital. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has to-day, not merely one finger, but the whole of its digits in the Nigerian “pie,” from which it has already pulled out a “plum” in the shape of a dividend of 100 per cent. paid in March last. It is not always the pioneer in a new mining field who strikes the richest areas, but under the guidance of its highly capable engineers, Champion Gold Reefs of West Africa obtained exclusive rights over some properties and interests in options over others which promise a magnificent harvest in years to come.