Railways, the chief means of affording easy access to the interior of the continent, were for many years after their first introduction to Africa almost entirely confined to the extreme north and south (Egypt, Algeria, Cape Colony and Natal). Apart from short lines in Senegal, Angola and at Lourenco Marques, the rest of the continent was in 1890 without a railway system. In Egypt the Alexandria and Cairo railway dates from 1855, while in 1877 the lines open reached about 1100 miles, and in 1890, in addition to the lines traversing the delta, the Nile had been ascended to Assiut. In Algeria the construction of an inter-provincial railway was decreed in 1857, but was still incomplete twenty years later, when the total length of the lines open hardly exceeded 300 miles. Before 1890 an extension to Tunis had been opened, while the plateau had been crossed by the lines to Ain Sefra in the west and Biskra in the east. In Senegal the railway from Dakar to St Louis had been commenced and completed during the 'eighties, while the first section of the Senegal-Niger railway, that from Kayes to Bafulabe, was also constructed during the same decade. In Cape Colony, where in about 1880 the railways were limited to the neighbourhood of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, the next decade saw the completion of the trunk-line from Cape Town to Kimberley, with a junction at De Aar with that from Port Elizabeth. The northern frontier had, however, nowhere been crossed. In Natal, also, the main line had not advanced beyond Ladysmith. The settlement, c. 1890, of the main lines of the partition of the continent was followed by many projects for the opening up of the possessions and spheres of influence of the various powers by the building of railways; several of these schemes being carried through in a comparatively short time. The building of railways was undertaken by the governments concerned, nearly all the African lines being state-owned. In the Congo Free State a railway, which took some ten years to build, connecting the navigable waters of the lower and middle Congo, was completed in 1898, while in 1906 the middle and upper courses of the river were linked by the opening of a line past Stanley Falls. Thus the vast basin of the Congo was rendered easily accessible to commercial enterprise. In North Africa the Algerian and Tunisian railways were largely extended, and proposals were made for a great trunk-line from Tangier to Alexandria. The railway from Ain Sefra was continued southward towards Tuat, the project of a trans-Saharan line having occupied the attention of French engineers since 1880. In French West Africa railway communication between the upper Senegal and the upper Niger was completed in 1904; from the Guinea coast at Konakry another line runs north-east to the upper Niger, while from Dahomey a third line goes to the Niger at Garu. In the British colonies on the same coast the building of railways was begun in 1896. A line to Kumasi was completed in 1903, and the line from Lagos to the lower Niger had reached Illorin in 1908. Thence the railway was continued to the Niger at Jebba. From Baro, a port on the lower Niger which can be reached by steamers all the year round, another railway, begun in 1907, goes via Bida, Zungeru and Zaria to Kano, a total distance of 400 miles. A line from Jebba to Zungeru affords connexion with the Lagos railway.
But the greatest development of the railway systems was in the south and east of the continent. In British East Africa a survey for a railway from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza was made in 1892. The first rails were laid in 1896 and the line reached the lake in December 1901. Meanwhile, there had been a great extension of railways in South Africa. Lines from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban and Delagoa Bay all converged on the newly risen city of Johannesburg, the centre of the Rand gold mines. A more ambitious project was that identified with the name of Cecil Rhodes, namely, the extension northward of the railway from Kimberley with the object of effecting a continuous railway connexion from Cape Town to Cairo. The line from Kimberley reached Bulawayo in 1897. (Bulawayo is also reached from Beira on the east coast by another line, completed in 1902, which goes through Portuguese territory and Mashonaland.) The extension of the line northward from Bulawayo was begun in 1899, the Zambezi being bridged, immediately below the Victoria Falls, in 1905. From this point the railway goes north to the Katanga district of the Congo State. In the north of the continent a step towards the completion of the Cape to Cairo route was taken in the opening in 1899 of the railway from Wadi Haifa to Khartum. A line of greater economic importance than the lastnamed is the railway (completed in 1905) from Port Sudan on the Red Sea to the Nile a little south of Berber, thus placing the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan within easy reach of the markets of the world. A west to east connexion across the continent by rail and steamer, from the mouth of the Congo to Port Sudan, was arranged in 1906 when an agreement was entered into by the Congo and Sudan governments for the building of a railway from Lado, on the Nile, to the Congo frontier, there to meet a railway starting from the river Congo near Stanley Falls. A railway of considerable importance is that from Jibuti in the Gulf of Aden to Harrar, giving access to the markets of southern Abyssinia.
Besides the railways mentioned there are several others of less importance. Lines run from Loanda and other ports of Angola towards the Congo State frontier, and from Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of German East Africa towards the great lakes. In British Central Africa a railway connects Lake Nyasa with the navigable waters of the Shire, and various lines have been built by the French in Madagascar.
All the main railways in South Africa, the lines in British West Africa, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and in Egypt south of Luxor are of 3 ft. 6 in. gauge. The main lines in Lower Egypt and in Algeria and Tunisia are of 4 ft. 8 1/2 in. gauge. Elsewhere as in French West and British East Africa the lines are of metre (3.28 ft.) gauge.
The telegraphic system of Africa is on the whole older than that of the railways, the newer European possessions having in most cases been provided with telegraph lines before railway projects had been set on foot. In Algeria, Egypt and Cape Colony the systems date back to the middle of the 19th century, before the end of which the lines had in each country reached some thousands of miles. In tropical Africa the systems of French West Africa, where the line from Dakar to St Louis was begun in 1862, were the first to be fully developed, lines having been carried from different points on the coast of Senegal and Guinea towards the Niger, the main line being prolonged north-west to Timbuktu, and west and south to the coast of Dahomey. The route for a telegraph line to connect Timbuktu with Algeria was surveyed in 1905. The Congo region is furnished with several telegraphic systems, the longest going from the mouth of the river to Lake Tanganyika. From Ujiji on the east coast of that lake there is telegraphic communication via Tabora with Dar-es-Salaam and via Nyasa and Rhodesia with Cape Town. The last-named line is the longest link in the trans-continental line first suggested in 1876 by Sir (then Mr) Edwin Arnold and afterwards taken up by Cecil Rhodes. The northern link from Egypt to Khartum has been continued southward to Uganda, while another line connects Uganda with Mombasa. At the principal seaports the inland systems are connected with submarine cables which place Africa in telegraphic communication with the rest of the world.
Numerous steamship lines run from Great Britain, Germany, France and other countries to the African seaports, the journey from any place in western Europe to any port on the African coast occupying, by the shortest route, not more than three weeks. (E. HE., F. R. C.)
1 Further conferences respecting the liquor traffic in Africa were held in Brussels in 1899 and 1906. In both instances conventions were signed by the powers, raising the minimum duty on imported spirituous liquors.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Authoritative works dealing with Africa as a whole in any of its aspects are comparatively rare. Besides such volumes the following list includes therefore books containing valuable information concerning large or typical sections of the continent:—
sec. I. General Descriptions.—(a) Ancient and Medieval. Herodotus, ed. G. Rawlinson, 4 vols.1 (1880); Ptolemy's Geographia, ed. C. Muller, vol. i. (Paris, 1883-1901); Ibn Haukal, ``Description de l'Afrique (transl. McG. de Slane), Nouv. Journal asiatique, 1842; Edrisi, ``Geographie'' (transl. Jaubert), Rec. de voyages . . . Soc. De Geogr. vol. v. (Paris, 1836); Abulfeda, Geographie (transl. Reinaud and Guyard, Paris, 1848-1883); M. A. P.d'Avezac, Description de l'Afrique ancienne (Paris, 1845); L. de Marmol, Description general de Africa (Granada, 1573); L. Sanuto, Geografia dell' Africa (Venice, 1588); F. Pigafetta, A Report of the Kingdom of Congo, &c. (1597); Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa (transl. J. Pory, ed. R. Brown), 3 vols. (1896); O. Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der afrikaensche gewesten, &c. (Amsterdam, 1668) (also English version by Ogilvy, 1670, and French version, Amsterdam, 1686); B. Tellez, ``Travels of the Jesuits in Ethiopia,'' A New Collection of Voyages, vol. vii. (1710); G. A. Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrittione de tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola (Milan, 1690) (account of the labours of the Capuchin missionaries and their observations on the country and people); J. Barbot, ``Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea and of Ethiopia Inferior,', Churchill's Voyages, vol. v. (1707); W. Bosman, A New . . . Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea, &c., 2nd ed. (1721); J. B. Labat, Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale, 5 vols. (Paris, 1728); Idem, Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale, 5 vols. (Paris, 1732). (b) Modern. B. d'Anville, Memoire conc. les rivieres de l'interieur de l'Afrique (Paris, n.d.); M. Vollkommer, Die Quellen B. d'Anville's fur seine kritische Karte von Afrika Munich, 1904); C. Ritter, Die Erdkunde, i. Theil, 1. Buch, ``Afrika'' (Berlin, 1822); l. M`Queen, Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and Central Africa (Edinburgh, 1821 ); Idem, Geographical Survey of Africa ( 1840); W. D. Cooley, Inner Africa laid open (1852); E. Reclus, Nouvelle geographie universelle, vols. x.-xiii. (1885-1888); A. H. Keane, Africa (in Stanford's Compendium), 2 vols., 2nd ed. (1904-1907); F. Hahn and W. Sievers, Afrika, 2. Aufl. (Leipzig, 1901); M. Fallex and A.Mairey, L'Afrique au debut du XXe siecle (Paris, 1906); Sir C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies, vols. iii. and iv. (Oxford, 1894, 1904); F. D. and A. J. Herbertson, Descriptive Geographies from Original Sources: Africa (1902); British Africa (The British Empire Series, vol. ii., 1899); Journal of the African Society; Comite de l'Afrique francaise, Bulletin, Paris; Mutteilungen der afrikan. Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Berlin, 1879-1889); Mitteilungen . . . aus den deutschen Schutzegebieten (Berlin); H. Schirmer, Le Sahara (Paris, 1893); Mary H.Kingsley, West African Studies, 2nd ed. (1901); J. Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (1897); Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, 2 vols. (1902) (vol ii. is devoted to anthropology); E. D. Morel, Affairs of West Africa (1902).
sec. II. Geography (Physical), Geology, Climate, Flora and Fauna. — (For Descriptive Geogr. see sec. I.)—G. Gurich, ``Uberblick uber den geolog. Bau des afr. Kontinents,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1887; A. Knox, Notes on the Geology of the Continent of Africa (1906) (includes a bibliography); L. von Hohnel, A. Rosiwal, F. Toula and E. Suess, B eitrage zur geologischen Kenntniss des omstlichcn Afrika (Vienna, 1891);
E. Stromer, Die Geologie der deutschen Schutzgebieten in Afrika (Munich, 1896); J. Chavanne, Afrika im Lichte uniserer Tage: Bodengestalt, &c. (Vienna, 1881); F.Heidrich, ``Die mittlere Hohe Afrikas,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1888; J. W. Gregory, The Great Rift-Valley (1896); H. G.Lyons, The Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906); S. Passarage, Die Kalahari: Versuch einer physischgeogr. Darstellung . . . des sudafr. Beckens (Berlin, 1904); Idem, ``Inselberglandschaften im tropischen Afrika,'' Naturw. Wochenschrift, 1904. 654-665; J. E. S. Moore, The Tanganyika, Problem (1903); W. H. Hudleston, ``On the Origin of the Marine (Halolimnic) Fauna of Lake Tanganyika,'' Journ. Of Trans. Victoria Inst., 1904, 300-351 (discusses the whole question of the geological history of equatorial Africa); E.Stromer, ``Ist der Tanganyika ein Rellikten-See?'' Peterm. Mitt., 1901, 275-278; E. Kohlschutter, ``Die . . . Arbeiten der Pendelexpedition . . . in Deutsch-Ost-Afrika,'' Verh. Deuts. Geographentages Breslau, 1901, 133-153; J. Cornet, ``La geologie du bassin du Congo,'' Bull. Soc. Beige geol., 1898; E. G. Ravenstein, ``The Climatology of Africa'' (ten reports), Reports Brit. Association, 1892-1901; Idem, ``Climatological Observations . . . I. Tropical Africa'' (1904); H. G. Lyons, ``On the Relations between Variations of Atmospheric Pressure . . . and the Nile Flood,'' Proc. Roy. Soc., Ser. A, vol. lxxvi., 1905; P. Reichard, ``Zur Frage der Austrocknung Afrikas,'' Geogr. Zeitschrift, 1895; J. Hoffmann, ``Die tiefsten Temperaturen auf den Hochlandern,'' &c., Peterm. Mitt., 1905; G. Fraunberger, ``Studien uber die jahrlichen Niederschlagsmengen des afrik. Kontinents,'' Peterm. Mitt., 1906; D. Oliver and Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, Flora of) Tropical Africa, 10 vols. (1888-1906); K. Oschatz, Anordnung der Vegetation in Afrika (Erlangen, 1900); A. Engler, Hochgebirgs-flora des tropischen Afrika (Berlin, 1892); Idem, Die Pflanzenwelt Ostaftikras und der Nachbargebiete, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1895); Idem, Beitrage zur Flora von Afrika (Engler's Botan. Jahrbucher, 14 vols. &c.); W. P. Hiern, Catalogue of the African Plants Collected by Dr Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-1861, 2 vols. (1896-1901); R. Schlechter, Westafrikanische Kautschuk-Expedition (Berlin, 1903); H. Baum, Kunene-Sambesi-Expedition (Berlin, 1903) (largely concerned with botany); W. L. Sclater, ``Geography of Mammals, No. iv. The Ethiopian Region,'' Geog. Journal, March 1896; H. A. Bryden and others, Great and Small Game of Africa (1899); F. C. Selous, African Nature Notes and Reminiscences (1908); E. N. Buxton, Two African Trips: with Notes and Suggestions on Big-Game Preservation in Africa (1902) (contains photographs of living animals); G. Schillings, With Flash-light and Rifle in Equatorial East Africa (1906); Idem, In Wildest Africa (1907) (striking collection of photographs of living wild animals); Exploration scientifique de l'Algerie: Histoire naturelle, 14 vols. and 4 atlases, Paris (1846-1850); Annales du Musee du Congo: Botanique, Zoologie (Brussels, 1898, &c.). The latest results of geographical research and a bibliography of current literature are given in the Geographical Journal, published monthly by the Royal Geographical Society.