The Times of 30th April, in an article arising from the newspaper's conference on Africa and seemingly based on the notion that nothing much happened to develop Africa until Bob Geldorf discovered it 29 years ago, reported the one time pop star as saying that after the Second World War, Africa had just a handful of small cities. He reportedly went on to say "There was no infrastructure,no rail, no roads,no air infrastructure. The colonial powers had done nothing about it. But then you suddenly had mobile phones and a virtual infrastructure was created".
His audience, brought up on a constant drip feed of "the colonials were awful" disinformation ever since the 1950s seem to have sat silent and raised no challenge.
Anyone is free to say anything in an open society and that is good. What Mr Geldorf did however in furtherance of his own arguments was a great diservice to many people who devoted their whole lives to developing the continent and actually doing exactly the things he said they didn't. They gave a lot more than money,of which they had little. Many, as well as their wives and families, did not survive very long.
Of course African cities were much smaller in 1945 than they are now. That wasn't some kind of colonial sin and act of dereliction. All cities everywhere were. It wasn't a question of development. There were far fewer people. Since then populations have grown fast on the back of medical advances in just keeping people, especially the very young and the very old , alive. There has also been more migration from poorer country areas and subsistence farming to urban areas as that is where the money and opportunities have been perceived to be. That's pretty much the same anywhere in the world.
As for rail, roads, harbours and air services almost every single railway line, and road in Africa was built during the colonial period. Since then many roads have been rebuilt, improved, widened , straightened, and some totally new alignments have been created but that is in the normal course of progress .It is in no way indicative of colonial negligence on the one hand or new impetus from Mr Geldorf on the other.
On the railways apart from the hopelessly uneconomic and originally politically (to avoid the South African ports) justified Tan-Zam line from Dar es Salaam to north of Lusaka not a single new railway line has been built on the continent since the colonial era. A number have substantially deteriorated or been closed. Most lines were in place before the 1930s and the colonials, particularly the British with Cecil Rhodes' vision of a Cape to Cairo line always in mind were almost obsessed with laying tracks everywhere, just as they had been at home in the late 19th century. Only now has the proposal to build new standard gauge lines in Kenya from Mombasa to Nairobi and on through Uganda and from the new port at Lamu to southern Sudan burst through to become one of the world's most exciting railway projects.
On the matter of air services, Mr Geldorf can be forgiven for forgetting that the world in 1945 was a very different place .Outside the USA and Europe there were very few air services anywhere and numbers of air travellers correspondingly low. The era of cheap mass travel and the aircraft which could deliver it didn't begin to arrive before the Boeing 707 and DC 8 got into their stride in the 1960s and the 747 in the 1970s. From then on the world did change way beyond most people's imagination in 1945 when such things seemed a generation away, if even imaginable. Again though the British colonials in particular were no slouches and through the federal multi-colony airlines East African, Central African and West African created networks of regional and domestic inter-city links between many cities towns which do not have air services today. East Africa had a host of puddlehopping services within the individual territories . There were also flights running through Kenya, Uganda and what was then Tanganyika which spent all day covering multi points and delivering people, cargo and mail to them all, journeys which would have taken days any other way or even been near impossible in the rainy seasons. The airline also ran all the way down the coast to Mozambique's capital,now Maputo. Central African's network knitted together what is now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and then continued on to Mbeya in southern Tanganyika, Dar es Salaam and eventually to Nairobi . In West Africa, West African Airways dimunitive Doves and later DC3s flew all the way through from Tiko in the east (near Douala in the Cameroon), around Nigeria and on through Accra and along the coast to Sierra Leone, no mean feat for relatively light unpressurised twin engined aircraft in the wet season flying through the towering cumulus clouds, the lashing rain and at times startling turbulence, all done with no radar, just a pilot with a map,radio and pencil. There wasn't much chance of a tea break and the sounds coming from the cabin behind can't have been too healthy. Another link took the airline right across the middle of Africa from Kano to Khartoum to connect with the eastern side of the continent. In the (Belgian) Congo, Sabena ran a masive domestic operation calling at places which have long dropped off the aviation map.They stretched beyond into east and central Africa, meeting the Indian Ocean once a week at Dar es Salaam.
So....sorry Mr Geldorf, it's a shame that the desire to make personal or political points meant some serious misrepresentation of history and the belittling or simply denial of the efforts of a lot of very dedicated people in your speech. They, and historical accuracy, - deserved better. Helping Africa isn't a solo one man business and never was. Just look at some of the colonial era cemetries there and think about the ages of many on the headstones.
That said we still don't quite understand the final bit about mobile phones creating a virtual infrastructure. That's a different thing altogether. The new technology has brought about a revolution in inter-person and business communication as it has everywhere. It has been particularly helpful in Africa where somehow the providers find they can do it profitably with subscribers paying a fraction of the charges they do in Europe. Kenya now leads the world in mobile phone banking and has a system more advanced than the one scheduled to be slowly rolled out in Britain.
That's phone and internet technology though .It in no way though replaces the need for more and better roads, railways and air services .
Perhaps that ,with the politics stripped out, is the point he was trying to make? If so he will be pleased about the steady and more recently explosive growth of air services on the eastern side of the continent thanks in particular to the efforts and investment of Ethiopian and Kenya Airways and the slow but steady liberalisation of traffic rights between African states. Roads and railways are another thing, of which more on Airnthere soon, but to ignore the good things that have been happening risks accusations of arrogance. A lot of people are, and have been for a lot longer than 29 years ,doing a lot of things on African transport, especially on the eastern side of the continent. Things are rather different over on the western side but it's not for lack of money. It's another story for another time.
His audience, brought up on a constant drip feed of "the colonials were awful" disinformation ever since the 1950s seem to have sat silent and raised no challenge.
Anyone is free to say anything in an open society and that is good. What Mr Geldorf did however in furtherance of his own arguments was a great diservice to many people who devoted their whole lives to developing the continent and actually doing exactly the things he said they didn't. They gave a lot more than money,of which they had little. Many, as well as their wives and families, did not survive very long.
Of course African cities were much smaller in 1945 than they are now. That wasn't some kind of colonial sin and act of dereliction. All cities everywhere were. It wasn't a question of development. There were far fewer people. Since then populations have grown fast on the back of medical advances in just keeping people, especially the very young and the very old , alive. There has also been more migration from poorer country areas and subsistence farming to urban areas as that is where the money and opportunities have been perceived to be. That's pretty much the same anywhere in the world.
As for rail, roads, harbours and air services almost every single railway line, and road in Africa was built during the colonial period. Since then many roads have been rebuilt, improved, widened , straightened, and some totally new alignments have been created but that is in the normal course of progress .It is in no way indicative of colonial negligence on the one hand or new impetus from Mr Geldorf on the other.
On the railways apart from the hopelessly uneconomic and originally politically (to avoid the South African ports) justified Tan-Zam line from Dar es Salaam to north of Lusaka not a single new railway line has been built on the continent since the colonial era. A number have substantially deteriorated or been closed. Most lines were in place before the 1930s and the colonials, particularly the British with Cecil Rhodes' vision of a Cape to Cairo line always in mind were almost obsessed with laying tracks everywhere, just as they had been at home in the late 19th century. Only now has the proposal to build new standard gauge lines in Kenya from Mombasa to Nairobi and on through Uganda and from the new port at Lamu to southern Sudan burst through to become one of the world's most exciting railway projects.
On the matter of air services, Mr Geldorf can be forgiven for forgetting that the world in 1945 was a very different place .Outside the USA and Europe there were very few air services anywhere and numbers of air travellers correspondingly low. The era of cheap mass travel and the aircraft which could deliver it didn't begin to arrive before the Boeing 707 and DC 8 got into their stride in the 1960s and the 747 in the 1970s. From then on the world did change way beyond most people's imagination in 1945 when such things seemed a generation away, if even imaginable. Again though the British colonials in particular were no slouches and through the federal multi-colony airlines East African, Central African and West African created networks of regional and domestic inter-city links between many cities towns which do not have air services today. East Africa had a host of puddlehopping services within the individual territories . There were also flights running through Kenya, Uganda and what was then Tanganyika which spent all day covering multi points and delivering people, cargo and mail to them all, journeys which would have taken days any other way or even been near impossible in the rainy seasons. The airline also ran all the way down the coast to Mozambique's capital,now Maputo. Central African's network knitted together what is now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and then continued on to Mbeya in southern Tanganyika, Dar es Salaam and eventually to Nairobi . In West Africa, West African Airways dimunitive Doves and later DC3s flew all the way through from Tiko in the east (near Douala in the Cameroon), around Nigeria and on through Accra and along the coast to Sierra Leone, no mean feat for relatively light unpressurised twin engined aircraft in the wet season flying through the towering cumulus clouds, the lashing rain and at times startling turbulence, all done with no radar, just a pilot with a map,radio and pencil. There wasn't much chance of a tea break and the sounds coming from the cabin behind can't have been too healthy. Another link took the airline right across the middle of Africa from Kano to Khartoum to connect with the eastern side of the continent. In the (Belgian) Congo, Sabena ran a masive domestic operation calling at places which have long dropped off the aviation map.They stretched beyond into east and central Africa, meeting the Indian Ocean once a week at Dar es Salaam.
So....sorry Mr Geldorf, it's a shame that the desire to make personal or political points meant some serious misrepresentation of history and the belittling or simply denial of the efforts of a lot of very dedicated people in your speech. They, and historical accuracy, - deserved better. Helping Africa isn't a solo one man business and never was. Just look at some of the colonial era cemetries there and think about the ages of many on the headstones.
That said we still don't quite understand the final bit about mobile phones creating a virtual infrastructure. That's a different thing altogether. The new technology has brought about a revolution in inter-person and business communication as it has everywhere. It has been particularly helpful in Africa where somehow the providers find they can do it profitably with subscribers paying a fraction of the charges they do in Europe. Kenya now leads the world in mobile phone banking and has a system more advanced than the one scheduled to be slowly rolled out in Britain.
That's phone and internet technology though .It in no way though replaces the need for more and better roads, railways and air services .
Perhaps that ,with the politics stripped out, is the point he was trying to make? If so he will be pleased about the steady and more recently explosive growth of air services on the eastern side of the continent thanks in particular to the efforts and investment of Ethiopian and Kenya Airways and the slow but steady liberalisation of traffic rights between African states. Roads and railways are another thing, of which more on Airnthere soon, but to ignore the good things that have been happening risks accusations of arrogance. A lot of people are, and have been for a lot longer than 29 years ,doing a lot of things on African transport, especially on the eastern side of the continent. Things are rather different over on the western side but it's not for lack of money. It's another story for another time.
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