BELGIAN CONGO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 January 1943, Page 4

BELGIAN CONGO

CENTRAL AFRICAN SUPPLY ROUTE ARRIVAL OF AMERICAN TROOPS. COUNTRY OF GREAT RICHES. The recent announcement that American forces have arrived at Leopold ville, in Belgian Congo, excites the imagination, notwithstanding the knowledge that Central Africa supply routes from the west to the east have beep in use for some time. Many American aircraft have been flown across this region, and one correspondent mentioned having seen a long camel caravan travelling east with war supplies. Belgian Congo, over 900,000 square miles in extent, which forms the heart of Equatorial Africa, has a seaboard of only 25 miles. At this spot the Congo River discharges into the Atlantic. At the mouth is the fine port of Banana.

Ninety-three miles upstream is the port of Matadi, the furthest point reached by ocean-going steamers. Between Matadi and Stanley Pool, upon which Leopoldville is situated, the river is unnavigable owing to rapids. A railway links the two towns, and to supply crude oil fuel for the hundreds of vessels plying on the river above Leopoldville and its many tributaries, which have a total navigable length of 6250 miles, a pipeline of 246 miles runs to Leopoldville.

The colony has over 3000 miles of railway. The longest stretch runs south-east from Port Francqui, on a lower tributary of the Congo, to Elizabethville; where it joins the continuous railway system to Capetown. North of Elizabethville a branch runs west to link with the line that runs across Portuguese Angolia to Benguela and Lobito on the Atlantic coast. There is another’ steamer and rail route by which a traveller can go from Leopoldville to Dar-es-Salaam, on the Indian Ocean. He travels over 1000 miles by steamer to Stanley Falls, then by train for a comparatively short distance to Ponthierville, by steamer to Kindu and then by train to Albertville, on the west coast of Lake Tanganyika. From there steamers ply to Kigoma on the east coast, which is the terminus of a line that runs to Dar-es-Salaam. RUBBER, TIN AND TUNGSTEN. Commercial aviation has made great strides in the colony, which has many airfields. The country has a native population of over 10,000,000, mainly of Bantu and Sundanese origin. Today the people have commercial incentive to tap wild rubber. The abandonment of compulsory rubber collection, which developed scandalous abuses in the early years of the century, coincided with a fall in the price and the beginning of the rise of the industry in Malaya and the East Indies. Of recent years the Congo output has been little more than 1000 tons a year. Now there is every reason to exploit to the full the rubber resources of the Congo forests. Today tin and tungsten are the most valued of Congo’s exports to the Allies, while copper is the largest. Over 150, 000 tons of copper were produced last year. In that period the export of tin was 15,000 tons, but new deposits are being opened up with American machinery and it is anticipated that the qquantity this year will be 40,000 tons an important contribution to industry when the great supplies of Malaya have been cut off. Last November Pan American Airways opened a service to the Congo, its flying boats making their base at Stanley Pool.