My African Journey

by Winston Churchill

The union under scientific direction in Uganda (and I include in this popular name Usoga, Unyoro, Toro and Ankole, etc.) of unequalled fertility with a population of high intelligence and social quality, in a region of extraordinary waterways, must, unless some grievous error or neglect should intervene, result in remarkable economic developments. Already more than half the traffic which passes down the railway to Mombasa comes from beyond the lake. Yet scarcely any money has ever been spent on Uganda. No European roads exist, no railways have been built, no waterfalls are harnessed, no public works of any serious description have been undertaken. A poor little grant-in-aid has barely supported the day-to-day cost of European administration, and practically nothing in cash or credit has been available for the development of the country. But it is alive by itself. It is vital; and in my view, in spite of its insects and its diseases, it ought in the course of time to become the most prosperous of all our East and Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel of all this part of the world. It is far from my desire to disparage the East African Protectorate, or to suggest diminution of activity or support. Both Protectorates are necessary to each other and should advance together; but in view of their relative positions, and looking at the situation as it is to-day, my counsel plainly is—"Concentrate upon Uganda!" Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or more rapidly realized.

Cotton alone should make the fortune of Uganda. All the best qualities of cotton can be grown in the highest perfection, a hundred thousand intelligent landowners occupying twenty thousand square miles of suitable soil are eager to engage in the cultivation. An industrious and organized population offers the necessary labour. Merely at the request of the Government cotton has been planted experimentally on a considerable scale throughout Uganda. The figures of production—though of course they are only the first beginnings—show a surprising expansion. Great care is required, and steps have already been taken to secure that the quality of cotton exported from Uganda is not deteriorated or its reputation prejudiced by hasty or untutored action, that only the seeds which yield the best results should be distributed, and that no indiscriminate mixture should be permitted. The Government must control the culture. Experts must watch the ginneries and educate the native cultivator. Roads must be made to enable the crop to be marketed. The scientific organization of the cotton-growing resources of Uganda has now been definitely undertaken. A special grant of £10,000 a year will in future be devoted to this purpose, and the whole process will be supervised by European officers in close touch through the Colonial Office with the highest Manchester authorities and the British Cotton-Growing Association. In the opinion of the ablest observers the next five years will see a very remarkable development in cotton production, even though the means available to foster it continue to be slender.

But cotton is only one of those tropical products for which the demand of civilized industry is almost insatiable, and which can nowhere in the world be grown more cheaply, more easily, more perfectly than between the waters of the two great lakes. Rubber, fibre, cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, sugar may all be cultivated upon the greatest scale; virgin forests of rare and valuable timber await the axe; and even though mineral wealth may perhaps never lend its hectic glory to Uganda, the economic foundations of its prosperity will stand securely upon a rich and varied agriculture. A settler's country it can never be. Whatever may be the destinies of the East African Highlands, the shores of the great lakes will never be the permanent residence of a white race. It is a planter's land, where the labours of the native population may be organized and directed by superior intelligence and external capital. For my own part I rejoice that the physical conditions of the country are such as to prevent the growth in the heart of happy Uganda of a petty white community, with the harsh and selfish ideas which mark the jealous contact of races and the exploitation of the weaker. Let it remain a "planter's land." Let the planters, instead of being the agents of excited syndicates with minds absorbed in the profits of shareholders thousands of miles away, be either Europeans of substance and character who have given proofs of their knowledge of natives and their ability to deal skilfully and justly with them, or better still—say I—let them be the disinterested officers of the Government, directing the development of the country neither in their own, nor any other pecuniary interest, but for the general good of its people and of the Empire of which it forms a part.

But if the immediate inflexion of British policy in Eastern Africa should be, without prejudice, but with precedence of other provinces, to accelerate the economic and social development of Uganda, what are the first steps to take? I might have much to say of Forestry and Agriculture; of an extended system of technical education similar to that given at the Gordon College at Khartoum, here perhaps in part to be achieved through grants in aid of the existing missionary schools; of road-making, indispensable to progress, of motor-transport, and of water-power. But let me make my message brief and unclouded, and as before expressed in three words, "Build a Railway."

The clusters of colonial possessions which have been acquired on the east and west coasts of Africa, so rapidly and with so little cost or bloodshed, will unquestionably prove an invaluable, if not indeed a necessary feature of the British Empire. From these vast plantations will be drawn the raw materials of many of our most important industries; to them will flow a continuous and broadening train of British products; and in them the peculiar gifts for administration and high civic virtues of our race may find a healthy and an honourable scope. Some of these great estates, like Southern Nigeria on the west coast, are already so prosperous as not only to be self-supporting, but able to assist with credit and subvention the progress of neighbours less far advanced. Others are still a charge upon our estimates. We are annually put to the expense of grants-in-aid more or less considerable for Northern Somaliland, the East African Protectorate, Nyassaland and Uganda. Heavy upon the finance of all the East Coast hangs the capital charge of the Uganda Railway. In no way will these charges be eased or removed except by the rise of one or more of the territories concerned to economic buoyancy, or by the growth of railway traffic down the Uganda trunk consequent upon development. Under present conditions the progress made from year to year is steady and encouraging. The charges upon the Colonial Estimates diminish regularly every year. Every year the administration of the different Governments increases in elaboration, in efficiency and consequently in cost. The extra charge is met ever more fully by the returning yield of a grateful soil. Except for the chances of war, rebellion, pestilence, and famine which brood over the infancy of tropical protectorates, but which may be averted or controlled, it would be easy to calculate a date—not too remote—by which all contribution from the British tax-payer would be unnecessary. The movement of events is encouraging; but there is one method by which it can be made far more sure and far more swift, by which all adverse chances are minimized, and all existing resources stimulated and multiplied—railways.

I would go so far as to say that it is only wasting time and money to try to govern, or still more develop, a great African possession without a railway. There can be no security, progress, or prosperity without at least one central line of rapid communication driven through the heart of the country. Where, as in Northern Somaliland, the land itself is utterly valueless, a mere desert of rocks and scrub, or where the military dangers are excessive and utterly disproportioned to any results that can ever be reaped—withdrawal and concentration are the true policy. But if for any reason it be decided to remain and to administer, a railway becomes the prime of absolute necessities. Till then all civilized government is extravagant and precarious, and all profitable commerce practically impossible. These considerations have lately led a British Government to sanction the extensive railways, nearly 600 miles long, now being rapidly constructed in Northern and Southern Nigeria; and the same arguments apply, though in my view with increased force, to the Uganda Protectorate.

It is not usually realized that the Uganda railway does not pass through Uganda. It is the railway to Uganda and not of Uganda. It stops short of the land from which it takes its name, and falls exhausted by its exertions and vicissitudes, content feverishly to lap the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Uganda is reached, but not traversed by steam communication in any form. Yet the extension of the railway from the western shores of the Victoria to the Albert Nyanza would not only carry it through much of the most valuable and fertile country within its radius, but as I shall show could far more than double its effective scope.

It may be accepted as an axiom that in the present state of development in these African protectorates, it is scarcely ever, and indeed I think never, worth while to build railways in competition with waterways. Railways should in new countries be in supplement of, and not in substitution for, lakes and navigable rivers. No doubt direct through-routes of railway, where bulk is not broken and all delays and changings are avoided, show an imposing advantage in comparison with a mere alternation of water stages and railway links. There could be no doubt which was the better if only you leave out the question of cost. But it is just this question of cost which cannot be left out, which clamorously dominates the proposition from the beginning. For first-class countries may afford first-class railways and trains de luxe, but second-class countries must be less ambitious, and young new jungle-born countries are satisfied, or ought to be, if they get any railway at all. The differences between the best railway in the world and the worst, are no doubt impressive; but they become utterly insignificant when contrasted with the difference between the worst railway in the world and no railway at all. For observe, the comparison is not with perfect lines of European communication, nor with anything like them, nor even with a waggon on a turnpike road. It is with a jogging, grunting, panting, failing line of tottering coolies, men reduced to beasts of burden, that the new pioneer line must be compared—that is to say, with the most painful, most degrading, slowest and feeblest method of transportation which has ever disgraced the world. And compared with that, any line of steam-communication, however primitive, however light, however interrupted, is heaven.

I am endeavouring to guide the reader to a positive proposal of a modest and practical character, I mean the construction of a new railway which might be called "The Victoria and Albert Railway," although it would virtually be an extension of the existing Uganda line. This railway should traverse the country between the great lakes, and join together these two noble reservoirs with all their respective river connections. The distance is not great. Two hundred and fifty miles would exceed the largest computation; and perhaps a line of one hundred and fifty miles would suffice. If the cost of this railway were estimated, as I am informed is reasonable, at a maximum figure of £5,000 a mile, the total sum involved would be between £1,250,000 and £750,000.

The supreme advantage of making a railway debouch upon a great lake, is that every point on the lake shore is instantly put in almost equal communication with railhead. Steamers coast round on circular tours, and whatsoever trade or traffic may offer along the whole circumference, is carried swiftly to the railway. Lakes are in fact the catchment areas of trade, and it is by tapping and uniting them that the economic life of Central Africa can be most easily and swiftly stimulated.