Annual report on Nyasaland / Colonial Office.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on Nyasaland / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/68 (page 16)
    the year the adoption of the principle of amalgamating all the Native Treasuries in their respective Provinces. Experience of the work and outlook of these Provincial Councils appeared to justify further progress, and at the beginning of the year an African Protectorate Council was created under the Presidency of the Chief Secretary consisting of Chiefs and other prominent Africans appointed by the Governor from nominations by the Provincial Councils. The functions of this Council may best be described in the words of the Governor when he addressed its members at their opening meeting in January: “I shall look to this Council for advice regarding all matters of major importance to the African people of Nyasaland and I will regard the resolutions of this Council as expressing the representative and authoritative views of the African people of this country. When the time comes to appoint Africans to the Nyasaland Legislative Council it will, in all probability, be from this Council that they are selected.” Turning now to the progress of development schemes, the Post-War Development Committee (whose activities were mentioned in the Intro¬ duction) were engaged on the revision of plans formulated during the war, with a view to the submission of a comprehensive programme for post-war development on which it was hoped to make an effective start in 1947. The only large schemes financed from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund in operation during the year were the five year plan for educational development and the venereal disease campaign, to both of which reference has already been made. Among other activities financed from this source were those of the Tung Oil Experimental Station, the Soil Conservation Scheme, and the Fishery Survey of Lake Nyasa, all of which made satisfactory progress. Some ^12,000 from Protectorate funds were spent on experimental and preliminary works in connection with the Vipya Tung Scheme, which visualises the development of tung in a large and otherwise unoccupied and unproductive area of the Northern Province. This scheme, if successful, will not only add greatly to the out¬ put of a valuable and useful crop—tung-oil is used extensively in the manufacture of paints and varnishes—but will also provide a much-needed market for the surplus foodstuffs and labour of a hitherto economically undeveloped area of the Protectorate. A large number of schemes for purely African welfare and development were financed from the Fund which bears that title and draws its revenue mainly from the surpluses of the Native Tobacco Board and from the profits on Government trading in cotton. Among these were land usage schemes, crop protection, the provision of halls and social centres, soil conservation measures, agricultural shows, and the provision of a pure piped water supply for the native town of Kota Kota. Numerous grants from this fund were also approved which have had to remain unexpended because of inability to obtain materials and staff with which to carry out the projects. In a period of steady progress such as that now recorded, one is apt to forget how much depends on the incalculables of the human element and the forces of nature, of which Nyasaland had four sharp and tragic