AFRICA IN 1957.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 47, 13 July 1908, Page 8

AFRICA IN 1957.

In the "World's Work" Mr. S. P. Verner makes out a strong case for the great improvements which will take place in the Dark Continent in fifty years. Cape Tqwn, he says, should then have a population of over one million whites, and hallf as many blacks. Kimberley will be as large as Birmingham ; Johannesburg as large as Sheffield ; Buluwayo as large as Leeds. At Victoria Falls there will be another Manchester. At Khartoum there will be a great university, in which English will be the language ; at Stanleyville probably another, where French will prevail. VICTORIA FALLS, THE NILE, AND THE NIGER. Victoria Falls will light Buluwayo and the Upper Zambesi Valley, and will be driving tramways, looms, and other industrial plants in all that region. Tho cataracts of the Nile will annually spin 1,000,000 bales qf cotton into fabric. At the head of the Livingstone cataracts at Stanley Pool a great dam will give the Congo a fifteen-foot draft for a thousand miles, and will deliver pqwer to railways in four different | directions. The Delta and upper j country of the Niger will be raising j 3,000,000 bales of cotton per year. The production of rubber from the I African Continent' will have reached ian annual total of £20,000,000. I RAILWAYS AND STEAMBOATS. ! ! Fifty years hence there will, we are I further told, be 150,000 miles of telegraphs and telephone wires, 301 000 miles of automobile roads, 40GOO miles of railways. There will Ibe over 1000 steamboats on the Af- ■ rican rivers. In the Zambesi and southern Congo region there will be an annual production of pig-iron to the value of over £20,000,000. There will be lumber manufacturing establishments in the great equatorial forests in German and British Eait Africa and in the Soudan. ! One will be able to travel from i London to Cape Town, if he wish, I by way of Constantinople, Asia Minor, Jerusalem, and Cairo-all the way by rail. But 1957 is a long ! way off, and it is easy to dream j dreams. ! | I i I j 1 |