FRENCH WEST AFRICA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 255, 25 September 1940, Page 8

FRENCH WEST AFRICA.

IMPORTANCE OF TERRITORY.

The Federation of French West Africa, where to forestall Axis plans and crystallise anti-Vichy feeling, General de Gaulle has taken action, is twice the size of French Equatorial Africa. It has an area of 1,820,000 square miles and a population of 15,000,000, Equatorial Africa’s population being 3,500,000. ’The European population of West Africa, in 1936, was 24,798. 'The capital of the federation is Dakar, in Senegal, where a naval action is reported to have taken place. Dakar is situated on the extreme western tip of the African continent, a busy sea lane lying between this point and the Portuguese Islands of Cape Verde. A friendly coast as far as the Mediterranean entrance would mean considerable added security for British | shipping. Dakar also has strategic significance because of. its importance as an air port. As the port nearest to South America it was developed before the war as an arrival and departure point tor aircraft. German interests used it extensively for that piupose. The territories which make up French West Africa are: Senegal (area 77,814 square miles, population 1,697,671) ; Mauritania (322,344 square miles, population 383,098) ;. French Guinea (96,865 square miles, population 2,011,172); Ivory Coast (189,029 square miles, population 3,850,653) ; Dahomey (47,144 square miles, population 1,351,511) ; and the inland colonies of French Sudan (582,437 square miles, population 3,568,966) ; and the Niger (483,526 square miles, population 1,746,875). The territory of the Upper Volta was apportioned in 1934 to French Sudan, the Niger Colony and the Ivory Coast.

The trade of the federation in 1937 was valued at 1,694,500,000 francs for imports and 1,512,000,000 francs for exports. The articles which made up the principal exports were ground nuts (mostly from Senegal), palm kernels palm oil, cocoa, cabinet woods, bananas, gold and cattle. The Senegalese have always been among the most valuable of the colonial soldiers of France, the North African lands being considered for the most part as part of the metropolitan army, the chief recruiting area for the large French Colonial Army thus being West Equatorial . Africa. General de Gaulle, if able to take'control of French West Africa and add Equatorial Africa to it, should be able to raise a large native army. From West Africa alone 150,000 men were lauded in France in the Great War and 354,000 were mobilised. M. Mandel, now under arrest in France, as Minister for Colonies in 1938 soon doubled the number of military effectives in French West Africa and elsewhere. It was computed at the beginning of the present war that French West Africa alone was capable of furnishing 1,000,000 men. Economically, the French colonies piwided more raw materials in the first few months of the present war than in the whole four years of the last.