EUROPE AND AFRICA 
of French West Africa. This will furnish the Upper Volta 
with an outlet to the sea at only one half the distance of 
Dakar and through a country whose products are suffi- 
ciently different to stimulate local exchanges. There is 
already an automobile road along this route, and here as 
elsewhere in Africa the automobile is playing a considerable 
part in the economic and political development of the 
country. The Upper Volta, without railroads or direct 
water transportation to the Coast, is at present largely 
dependent for economical transportation and connection 
with the outside world on its 2000 miles of automobile roads. 
Dahomey’s chief railway runs from the port of Kotonu to 
Savé (156 miles), whence an automobile road runs 310 miles 
farther to the Niger River. In West Africa, however, a 
large part of the roads classed as automobile roads are not 
passable during the rainy season, but this disadvantage is 
somewhat offset by the fact that the Upper Niger is navi- 
gable at high water. Recently the Governor-General tra- 
versed in twenty days approximately the course followed 
by Captain Binger in eighteen months in 1887-89. Tim- 
Suctu — though still a synonym for remoteness — may 
now be reached by rail and steamer, and Zinder, the capital 
of the vast inland Niger colony, may be reached by auto in 
two days from the rail head at Kano in British N igeria. 
Zinder has long been in telegraphic communication with 
the other parts of West Africa, and Timbuctu and Bamaku 
communicate with Paris by radio. Dakar, connected with 
France by cable, wireless, and an airplane mail service 
1925) has outgrown the plans of 1903 — criticized as over- 
ambitious —and is embarking on another big program of 
port development. In 1923 over 5,000,000 tons of shipping 
entered its port, which is as much as entered any American 
port except New York. 
The commerce of West Africa has grown with the estab- 
148