Secondary Industries for Tropical Africa
Opening ParagraphThere is a tendency in some quarters to regard secondary industries as a panacea for all the economic ills of tropical Africa. It would be well at this initial stage to sound a note of warning. In the past, the industrialization of agricultural countries has had two results: one good, one bad. On the one hand, the establishment in a country of labour-saving machinery and large-scale production in place of the old laborious method of making things by hand has led to a rise in the general standard of living within the country in terms of real incomes. On the other hand, the drift of workers to the towns and the herding together of large numbers of people in factories resulted in the sum of social evils associated with the ‘dark satanic mills’: overcrowding, sweated labour, destitution, unemployment, and many more. The problem for tropical Africa to-day is to combine the maximum of the first and good effect with a minimum of the second evil.