Esparto grass, for making paper, was formerly an important export, but the increasing use of wood-pulp for this purpose has had the effect of increasing the grazing area, and therefore the wool-crop. Date-palms grow in great profusion, and the excess forms an important export, going to nearly every part of Europe and the United States. A large part of the crop, however, is consumed by the Arabs. Sumac-tanned goat-skins, for book-binding leather, are also exported.
The colonies must import coal. Manufactures are therefore restricted to the preparation of the fruit and food products. Sponges are an important product. Railways provide the necessary transportation for the crops. Algiers, the metropolis, is a finely built city and a favorite winter-resort. Oran is the shipping-port for grain and esparto grass. Biskra is the market for dates.
The caravan trade of northern Africa is considerable, and the greater part converges at Tripoli, to which not far from ten thousand camel-loads of merchandise are brought annually. This trade is carried on mainly by the Arabs, who cover the region from Timbuctu to Lake Chad. They bring ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, goat-skins, and slaves. In return they carry cloth, fire-arms, ammunition, and various commodities to the negro villages of the Sudan. The district is a possession of Turkey. Its chief exports are esparto grass, sponges, and dye-stuffs.
Central Africa.—Central Africa is divided among the chief European powers. Great Britain and Germany divide the lake-region and the Zanzibar coast. On the Guinea coast the French are an additional factor. The trade of these regions consists of an exchange of tropical products—palm-oil, rubber, ebony, camwood, ivory, and hides—for cloth, tobacco, fire-arms, beads and trinkets, and preserved foods. Most of this trade is carried on by companies holding royal charters.
The Kongo State is a semi-official corporation of this character, the King of the Belgians being its chief executive officer. The active administration is carried on by agents of the company. The chief of each tribe or village is required, under penalty, to furnish a certain quota of crude rubber and other products; and between the agent and the Arab slave-driver the natives have little to choose.
The Kongo River is the outlet of the state, and to facilitate the transportation of the products, railways have been built, or are under construction, around the rapids. This region is about the only remaining source of elephant ivory, but most of the supply consists of the tusks of animals long since dead. A fleet of steamboats carries the commercial products to the coast. Stanley Pool, at the head of the rapids, is the chief depot for collection. Ocean steamships ascend the river to a point above Boma, the place of administration.
Nigeria and Ashanti are British possessions on the Guinea coast,[81] having a trading company organization. Sierra Leone is an organized colony, a product of which is the kola-nut. British East Africa is important for strategic purposes, inasmuch as it includes the upper Nile basin, a territory sometimes known as the Egyptian Sudan. Akra is the trading port of Nigeria, and Khartum of the upper Nile Valley. Zanzibar is the metropolis of the east coast.
The French possessions include a large territory at the mouth of the Kongo, the western part of the Sahara, and the islands of Madagascar and Reunion. In German East Africa the commercial development has been substantial, and large plantations for the cultivation of tropical products are in operation. A railway from the coast to the lake-district is under construction. Mombasa is its commercial outlet.
The Italians have nominal possession of a territory facing the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and also of the peninsula of Guardafui. Their actual possession, however, is restricted to the island and trading-post of Massawa. Their attempts to conquer Abyssinia have been unsuccessful.
Cape of Good Hope and the South African Colonies.—Up to the time of the Suez Canal, Cape of Good Hope was a sort of half-way house between British ports and India, and this position made it commercially important. Even at the present time more than fifteen hundred vessels, many of them in the Indian Ocean trade, call at the chief port of the colony every year.