west african development

The Royal African Society

West African DevelopmentAuthor(s): Noel HallSource: African Affairs, Vol. 44, No. 177 (Oct., 1945), pp. 158-163Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/718370 .

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I58 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

West African Development By NOEL HALL

This article forgs the concluding sectiox of a lecture by the late Ecoxomic Adzriser {o the Resident Minister, given xnder the Chairmanship of Lord Hailey on the 26th June. Mr. Hall started his description of economic progress by analysi3?g soune cat6ses of change operating to assist the iznpOrt of new capital. These included the effect of the war: on the rnen through artny traini>g and experience; on the women thro?gh the allovtance system; and on West Afrisfx generally throggh economic cotrols, and the chan,,ed strategic position. IT is against this background of change and of new facts that the plannin^,

of post-war development for West Africa must be considered. But there is one further fact that must be added. The interruption of recruitment and the very heavy additional burdens that have been carried during the war by depleted departments and administrative groups, plus the prospect of a considerable crop of retirements, make it unreasonable to expect in the immediate future, the preparation of detailed plans to be applied systematically over the decade. It is too early for precise policy making of this type even if the personnel needed to do it was immediately available. But the stage is being got ready for developments of this kind as soon as circumstances perrnit. Under the I940 Development Act, development committees both central and local llave been set up and while these at the present time harre not got the assistant staff that they will need if they are to do their best work, they are already introducing into the machinery of Government an element of executive continuity that was not possible before.... It has often been said that the constant changes in key personnel, Governors, heads of important policy departments and the like have resulted in changes at least in emphasis if not in the content of policy. The development committees, if they are well led and well used should help to mitigate this state of affairs. Even if one or two key men are changed, a sufficient number of members of the committees should remain long enough to cause, as the years pass, the emergence of a common and continuing mind.... As their work proceeds, it should become easier to judge any particular application for assistance under the new Development Act, not only on its particular merits, but also by its relation- ships to other schemes and to the overall policy of each government. This in its turn implies that there will be general plans for each colony framed to cover a term of years, all departures from which will need to be explained. And here let me say that I myself spell plan with a small and not with a capital P. We have done violence to the English language during the last fifteen years by allowing the word planning, when used in connection with social or economic affairs, to be, not itself, but a tepid imitation of the German Planwirtschaft. While I hope that each of the four dependencies will prepare its own comprehensive plan and that these in the right way and at the right time may be collated into a suitable overall West African regional plan, I do not think that it is either possible or desirable to prepare now a detailed set of plans. To do so might well be to provide for West



Is9 WEST AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

Africa a procrustean bed into which the changing facts of the comin, decade could be ftted only by stretching some and truncating others....

But we shall need from the outset some agreement about the ultimate target and upon methods. In the remaining portion of my remarks, I want to deal with these.... In general terms we know what we are after. If the full potentialities of that great majority of the population which lives in the rural areas are to attain a fuller and more individual and responsible life they must be better nourished, have clean and safe water to drink, and better homes and better personal equipment of all kirlds. This can only be brought about in one way: the people as a whole must become more productive. This does not mean simply that they must work harder. It means that their efforts must be more systematically applied. In the fields, there must be changes iIl the things produced so that the available output will provide dietaries more in keeping with nutritional requirements. This means in the first instance better knowledge, better seeds and stock, suitable fertilisers and farm- equipment. But it also requires that each man working iIl the fields shall have a larger net output and that a smaller proportion of the total labouring force engaged will actually work directly in the fiLelds and that a higher proportion will be engaged in all the pursuits of the countryside, making and maintaining farm equipment, building and maintaining houses and household equipment or engaged in exchanging the surpllls output of one district for the surplus of another so that both may have a more varied and better balanced dietary, the result of more specialised and better applied productive effort on the land itself Plans for road development must more and more be judged by their relevance to the changes in rural life that all this will require; so must also the provision on both the large and small scale of water supplies, marketing facilities and also health and education services for rural areas. This is indeed foreshadowed in the preliminary development plans that were laid before the Nigerian Legislature this spring by the vigorous and far seeing Development Secretary, Mr. F. E. V. Smith who, amongst many other qualifications for his job, brings to it an early and exact- ing training in the biological sciences in their application to agnculture. Early in his report, he emphasises the need for internal development and for internal trade and the interchange between the different areas of Nigeria of their specialised products an interchange that is already beginning and was wisely fostered by Captain Mackie, until lately Director of Agriculture in Nigeria....

I hope that a great many of the schemes that will be Enanced under the new act will contribute to an enriched rural life of a suitable African model

(Here Mr. Hall spent some time stressirgg the fact that "Africa needs a rxral revolution" before other developments, like indsfstrialisation a la russe.)

Let me now depart from generalisation and give you three accounts of schemes already in operation that are embryonic rural revolutions, each of them assisted under the Development Act and each demonstrating how difiicult it is to carry out this work and the demands that it makes upon those who devote their lives to it. These examples are representative of what is and can be done....



I60 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

First let me take you to Anchau irl Northern Nigeria, lying not far from

Zaria, where already you feel the influence of the great arid region stretching

away to the north. It is a fairly representative piece of upland savannah

country, reasonably well treed and intersected by small rivers and streams

which are torrents in the rains. Indeed the area is cut off from the rest of

the world at the height of the rains which regularly make impassable the

fords across the rivers on the two roads connecting it with the main centres of

administration. Ten years ago, the high local incidence of sleeping sickness

attracted the attention of a small and very knowledgeable group of young

doctors. The ravages of the tsetse fly had infected a large proportion of the

people and even if they did not suffer from sleeping sickness itself, they were

debilitated human beings and an easy prey to any other ill. Their agriculture,

in consequence, was backward and their poverty great. The environment

was on top of man and all progress was inhibited. The fundamental cause

of the trouble was not difficult to diagnose. The fly bred rapidly in the

bushes overhanging the streams and close to human habitations. As the

fly spread so did infection. The first thing was to attack the fly. But the

doctors were not content solely to attack the fly. Arguing that if one set of

changes was to be made others might well be made at the same time, they

brought into the area with them a group of field workers, mainly practical

farmers. The basic idea was that it was not much good enabling the people

to live more healthy lives if outlets were not provided simultaneously for

their greater energies and vitality. The devil of tsetse-born infection was to

be cast out but the house was not to be left swept and garnished for seven

devils worse to enter. But still the whole campaign centred round the

destruction of the fly and its influences. The first job was to clear the streams of overhanging bushes and to clear

the worst breeding grounds close to human habitations. Then belts of under-

growth had to be cleared and kept clear to check re-infection. This task

could not be done without some disturbance to the habits and customs of the

people. Some living sites had to be given up altogether, fields customarily tilled had to be abandoned and the largest village or small town had to be

shifted altogether. Because there was a perfectly valid reason for these

changes and because the Emir of Zaria was a keen supporter of the plan,

and himself helped to explain it to the leading men in the area, there was

virtually no opposition to these changes. Once this had become clear, the

team decided that they need not be content with purely negative work but

that the opportunity might be taken to introduce new methods of farming,

xlew starldards for village amenities and generally a rural revolution touching

the life of the community at all important points. While, therefore, the people were working in gangs clearing streams and

protective belts, the great majority of them were given, by African dispensers

in additional clinics provided for the purpose, injections and other treatment needed to rid them of infection with the result that for the Erst time in the

area full records needed for a public health service were collected and

analysed. Meanwhile plans were being prepared to resettle the people in new

or reconstructed villages, to farm fresh and carefully selected land using



I6I WEST AFItICAN DEVELOPMENT

better secdsX better tools and supplied more abundantly than usual with natural manures to be provided from improved methods of stock manage- ment. But at this stage substantial difficulties were met. The knowledge nee(led to carry out these changes with a reasonable chance of success was not available. The field officers of the team set to work to acquire the needed information. As there uas no soil survey, they set to work to make one. This involved marking out on large scale maps, which they had to prepare themselves, a large number of traces. Day after day, month after month, the small group walked these traces, notebook in hand, recording the vegetation. Night after night in the mud huts that they had built for their homes and with their wives to help them, all the information was collated aIld at last vegetation maps of the area were ready. These have been found in practice to be a not inadeguate substitute for a soil survey, and they have been used successfully as a basis for selecting areas for redevelopment by improved farming methods. Even to a complete layman like myself. the results were clearly beneficial. You could see at once when you passed from the old to the new areas where the improved methods hasTe been introdueed.

Meanwhile the team were themselves experimenting, in buildings that they had to erect for the purpose, with improved breeding methods for cattle, pigs and poultry and in simple methods of storing foodstuffs. The use of simple methods of screening plus great reduction in the fly population as a result of the clearing and of careflll siting of the cow and pig houses gave encouraging results and a small number of the local people were carefully trained in animal husbandry. Experiments were aiso carried out in raising vegetables, better strains of field crops andin raising fruit and other economic trees.

The results of all this were beginning to be visible when I visited New Anchau last summer. The new township is well laid out with wide streets that recall the wool towns of the English countryside. The individual compounds are well spaced out and leave room for further changes in the future. Drainage is good and, in an area by itself, is the new market, perhaps the most snteresting that I saw in all West Africa. It is like all of themS the social as wel3 as the business centre for t.he whole area and there are adequate facilities for washing for all those ̂ Jho use it Lying to one side under the charge of specially trained Africans is the slaughter slab, as clean as tlle slaughter house of a well-trained Enghsh butcher, and copiously sllpplied with water. All the by-products of the slaughter house are collected and composted and used in the new nursery garden, which lies right alongside, and where fruit trees are raised and better practices irl handling vegetables and field crops are demoIlstrated and improved plants supplied. But these things are not the only by-product of the team that has attacked sleeping sickness in Anchau. In order to explairl what was being done to the people and to carry them with them in all that they mrere trying to get done, they trained a team of propagandists to do the talking for them. The team has trained other teams and to-day there are in each village in the area small groups responsible for maintaining the new standards that have been set and achieved. And in each village, by the wish of the people, there has been

11 AR 44



I62 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

set aside buildings not only for the teaching of the children but also for mass adult education. As I walked about through the whole area these were pointed out to me with great pride and I saw as I went a number of rural crafts developing, simple methods of soap production, simple types of car- pentry to fit up the improved types of mud houses and the embryonic craft of agricultural tool making and repairing.

There is no need for me to point the moral. The work in health clinics, where the whole campaign started shows that the incidence of sleeping sickness infection has fallen in a most spectacular manner and so, as the doctors expected, has the propensity of the people to fall a prey to other diseases. The numbers in the team of Bntish officers has been reduced but the work has caught hold and is continuing. Neighbouring villages are imitating the work and at a rough guess, I estimate that the way of life of some three hundred thousand people has been radically changed and that they all to-day have opportunities in their personal lives that would have been thought fantastic ten years ago.

The stages in the work are worth noting. First the whole scheme was based upon a thoroughly sound and scientific diagnosis. Without all the prior work of the Nigerian medical department and research in tropical diseases in Nigeria and elsewherey the focal point for attack could not have been diagnosed accurately and the whole campaign sqllarely based on fact. Secondly, the simultaneous attack not only on the health but the agricultural and housing sides as well was indispensable. The team worked as a unit. The leader chanced to be a doctor but all the different specialists contributed alike to the work which was planned and carried out as a unit. The field officers were not members of the staff of the agricultural or veter- inary departments but they, like the doctors, owed much to great knowledge that the specialist departments had accumulated and the high standards that they had set 2tnd insisted upon. The third point was that 1learly all the Brork was done by the local people themselves and the pace of the work was set by the possibility of training a sufficient number of the local people to work as propagandists, health officers, stockmen and the like. This gives a reasonable assurance of continuity when the field team is withdrawn; and what happens then is, of course, the final test of the whole experiment.

The only substantial criticism of the scheme that I heard is most interest- ing. It was that the Anchau experiment set standards so high that they could not possibly be repeated elsewhere and that therefore the whole thing was nothing more than a stunt. Pressed to elaborate the point further the critics usually said that it was impossibly expensive and used too many Europeans. The costs are, therefore, worth looking at. The Development and Welfare grant from United Kingdom sources was ?g2,000 and not all of this has yet been spent. In addition certain costs fell upon the Nigerian government, principally the services of seconded oicers. The local expenses were very small. These figures are moderate, judged by the result achieved. But remember that much of the money went to enable that vegetation survey to be made by footslogging by highly qualified officers. Had there been a proper aerial survey and a few officers expert in preparing vegetation maps



I63 WEST AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

from specially taken air photographs, work that took serreral years of costly toil could have been done in several months at the outside. Moreover, the scheme was an experiment. When the team arrived out of England, there was no place for them to live and they had to start by seeing to the buildino of their own homes. With the experience they have gained at Anchau, with better equipment and preliminary surveys and with proper arrange- ments made in advance for the accommodation of the team, a great deal of time could have been saved. And when the time of imported European officers is involved, wasted time leads very quickly to the waste of much money. I see that the preliminary development plans for Nigeria call for the appointment of up to one hundred rural development officers. I hope that as and when these officers become available, the Nigerian government will pay particular attention to the way in which they are to be used. As small groups, organised on the Anchau model and concentrating upon achieving precise results in a deEnite area by a given date, they are much more likely to achieve results than if they are scattered as individuals throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria.

(Mr. Hall then gave a very brief account of work in the canoe fisheries of the South East Gold Coast and the redevelopment of the textile industry in Togolared.)

I hope that I have said enough to make for you a picture of all the small things, each very difficult and each making very great demands upon one or more individuals out of which detailed development programmes will come to be built. This must be an almost record-making talk on West Africa because I do not think that I have mentioned either cocoa or edible oils. Each would halre required a lecture in itself as would also the problems of native agricultural indebtedness arld the role of co-operation in the rural levelopments that I have been talking about. Nor have I discussed the work of the new labour departments, or the embryonic social services, and I have left for Maxwell Fry, when he gets home, to tell you of the great work that he has been doing in replanning the principal towns of West Africa. You will need a special session for his wife who has gone with the greatest enthusiasm into the whole gamut of problems that surround the future of housing in West Africa. All these, and many other thirlgs like them, will make up the substance of the development programmes in West Africa but, and here I come back to my central point, all these things, good in themselves, get purpose and meaning when they are squarely focused upon the central questiorl: how are those who live on and of the land to be enabled to be more productive in their ordinary avocations? That is why I have spent so long upon my three illustrations. Development matters that are concerned with international trade will not be neglected. The great and public spirited com.panies that are concerned with them are a sufficient guarantee of that. An outsider like myself, pnvileged to be for a short period a guest amongst the regular members of the service must be the mouthpiece of the less familiar and the less spectacular parts of their work and this is what I have tried to do to-day.

(&lr. Hall ended his talk with a demand that the eqgipment and anenities of all Egropean ocials shovZd be greatly imp roved, for simple reasons of eXciency.)



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