Focus on Africa

Abstract

DR. LIGHT'S book presents us with a new technique in the methods of study travel in Africa--the use of the private aeroplane. Travel by motor-car has many obvious advantages for the student of African conditions, but is subject to two serious drawbacks. In eastern and equatorial Africa and some parts of West Africa, the traveller is confined during the rainy season to a few all-weather roads. Moreover, the great distances impose on him at all times an irritating waste of time. One is apt to forget, for example, that the area of French West Africa is greater than that of the Indian Empire; that the Belgian Congo is five times the size of France; or that the Union of South Africa, including its mandate, has four times the area of Germany. Here the aeroplane certainly has the advantage. But there is at present a very grave obstacle in the paucity of landing grounds and of metereological information, away from the main routes taken by commercial airways. Dr. Light's journey took him from the Cape, through the Rhodesias, Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda and the Sudan, to Cairo. Air facilities are good in the Union, and fairly well developed in Southern Rhodesia; in Northern Rhodesia and East Africa t hey are very limited. It would have been interesting had Dr. Light's journey allowed him the opportunity of comparing conditions in the Belgian Congo, where the authorities appreciated, at an early date, the value of internal air communications, and have for a number of years maintained an efficient local service through the Sabena organization. Focus on Africa By Richard Upjohn Light. (American Geographical Society, Special Publication, No. 25.) Pp. xv + 228 + 145 plates. (New York: American Geographical Society, 1941.) 5 dollars; 3 dollars to Fellows.