REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25305, 16 August 1943, Page 3

REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT

RUGBY, Aug. 18

The story of how West Africa became a great strategic highway and the starting point of the transafrica air route was told in London to-day by Viscount Swinton, Resident Minister of the territory. He said that everything done had to be improvised because all assumptions made at the start of the war had been falsified by events such as the fall of France and the Japanese invasion of Malaya, with the loss of rubber, oils, and minerals. Viscount Swinton said that in Nigeria alone we had built 30 airfields, complete with controls, hangars, and all essential equipment. A great job had been done by the Public Works Department in Nigeria, employing tens of thousands of native workers. ■ The navy also had done an immense job in organising the protection of shipping on the long sea route via South Africa to the East, but this was greatly eased by the achievement of French unity and the cc-operatlon of the French Fleet at Dakar. On the army side an enormous expansion of native regiments had been carried out West Africa’s war effort had meant a vast amount of constructional work in building camps, port development, rail development, railway extensions, and new roads.