Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

The carriers are mostly Hausas, but the fame of the Gold Coast carrier traffic has spread far into the northern regions of Africa with the result that recognized caravan routes now come right down through the northern territories. These carriers, many of them from around and even beyond Lake Chad, drive herds of cattle down to the Gold Coast colony about harvest time. They sell the cattle and then carry cocoa for the season. When the main harvest is over and there is little cocoa carrying, they will purchase loads of kola nuts which they carry back with them to the far interior and sell en route at a considerable profit. Thus they make a threefold financial return—on the sale of cattle, cocoa carrying, and profits on the kola nut trade.

COCOA DRYING IN SUN.

The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover. The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton. They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill, while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20s. per cask.

TRANSPORT DIFFICULTIES

The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should fail to reach the coast.

In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.

The other British colony in which cocoa has a future is Southern Nigeria. To read the Government reports of ten years ago there seemed little hope that the natives of this colony would become cocoa farmers, or indeed that they would ever do much more than vegetate in the agricultural world. Africa is the land of surprises, and more and more the African is surprising Europe by exploding “the lazy nigger theory.”

The Acting Secretary of Southern Nigeria, writing his 1903 report from Old Calabar, said:—

“With every year that passes, it becomes increasingly important that new exports, indicating new areas of work and development, should make an appearance on the export lists of the Protectorate. That ‘Palm Oil’ and ‘Palm Kernels’ will ever cease to be the dominant products is more than unlikely; but these products demand nothing from the native in the way of labour that the veriest bushman cannot carry out. Portions of this Protectorate must be gradually turned over—and education may succeed, where persuasion fails—to the production of other commodities. It is not in the nature of the average West African to lay out capital for which there is no immediate return. He can understand the yam growing at his door; he can understand the cask of oil to be filled before his ‘boys’ can return with the required cloth, pipe, or frock-coat, but he will not sow for his son to reap; nor will a village work, of its own initiative, for the benefit of the next generation that is to occupy it. It is this difficulty that has rendered so great the task of encouraging the rubber industry. It is for this reason that cocoa and coffee have never been properly taken up by the natives themselves.”