Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

SPACING

In very few plantations that we visited was there any adherence to the wide spacing so strongly advised by expert agriculturists. The British Botanical Gardens of Aburi set an example by laying out experimental plots with cocoa trees fifteen feet apart, but the natives in that colony, and also in Southern Nigeria, ridicule this advice and declare that at such distance they find the rays of the sun are able to penetrate so freely that the ground becomes baked and the roots are robbed of the humidity which is vital to the growth of good cocoa trees. It is noteworthy that on Grenada and other West Indian estates, there is also a tendency to plant more closely than the experts advise. Neither in the Gold Coast nor in Southern Nigeria do many plantations give wider spacing than eight feet apart, and thus many of them crowd from 500 to 700 trees upon a single acre. The plantations in British West Africa being entirely under native control, there are no very reliable statistics upon the annual yield per tree. One official at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi estimated that the natives obtain about 7 lbs. of cocoa per tree per annum; this is a very high average, and I am inclined to think seldom attained, for in Trinidad the annual yield is somewhere about 1 lb. per tree. We visited one large cocoa plantation in Southern Nigeria, where a native had planted 100,000 cocoa trees about one-half of which were already yielding, and from the 50,000 he had obtained within the year 30 tons of cocoa, or an average per tree of a little over 1¼ lbs.

The most important question, that from which the planter is never free, is that of labour. The Germans put the labourers on contracts of twelve months with wages of 8s. to 10s. per month with food, but the conditions of these plantations are not likely to inspire any great enthusiasm amongst humanitarians or economists. The abject fear exhibited by the natives whenever the white man approaches is too eloquent to be mistaken, moreover the whip is carried by the planters as openly as a man in Europe carries a walking-stick. Whips and free contracts seldom go together. Under another section I have dealt with Portuguese labour which in the main is a system of slavery, although it carries with it a paper wage of about 10s. per month and rations.

COST OF LABOUR

The native farmers of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast employ a good deal of native labour and generally speaking find little difficulty in obtaining all they want. These native farmers, however, prepare their contracts somewhat differently from the European, generally they are for “twelve months of thirty working days,” and the wages vary from 15s. to 20s. per month, whilst a foreman will get 30s. a month. The labourers are free to go at any time, but those who complete their contracts to the satisfaction of the employer are usually given a bonus.

Cocoa growing is probably the least arduous labour in the tropical world of agriculture, as it involves less exposure and at no stage can it be called dangerous as is the case with copra, palm oil and indigenous rubber. The proportion of labourers employed varies according to the colony and circumstances. In the island of Fernando Po, the planters endeavour to employ one man per acre, but the restricted supply of labour seldom permits so ideal a proportion. In the Portuguese island of San Thomé, one labourer is allowed for each hectare under cultivation, but it must require a good deal of “persuasion” to get a native to control an average of at least 2¼ acres of cocoa.

Concurrently with native labour is the question of white supervision which is necessarily costly. On one cocoa plantation of San Thomé, with a total expenditure of £23,000 no less than £3000 is spent upon white control. Upon those Belgian plantations of Mayumbe which are cultivated by free labour, there is barely any white supervision, whilst on the Portuguese islands the proportion of employés works out at about one white man to every thirty natives.

So far as it is possible at the moment to forecast the future of cocoa production in West Africa, the British system alone rests upon a solid basis, for the obvious reason that all other fields are dependent upon systems of labour supply which have little chance of continuance, much less extension. The indigenous industry of the British colonies working in its own interests, unencumbered by the heavy cost of European supervision and the drawbacks of imported contract labour, will, under the guidance of a paternal and sympathetic administration, certainly outdistance and leave far behind in the race for supremacy such systems as those which prevail in San Thomé and Principe.

This virile British enterprise which is bounding forward throughout the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria has only one real enemy—the concessionnaire hunter. Fortunately, the British Government is fully alive to the danger and is determined, so far as possible, to keep the agricultural land in the hands of the natives. If this can be secured without placing powers in the hands of the Government which would lead to widespread disaffection and unrest amongst the natives, then the cocoa industry of British West Africa promises to eclipse all other cocoa-producing areas of the world.