162 No. 98 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ( lying between the swamp region and the Nile-Congo watershed, in the southern and western Bahr el-Ghazal districts, are opened up by railway communications, large areas will be put under cotton by the natives, as has been the case in Uganda and elsewhere. Railways are the crying need of this Upper Sudan region.

Rubber is another product which has almost un limited prospects of development in the Sudan . Ceara rubber needs no capital outlay, for Manihotglaziovii, from which it is obtained, can be planted in bush country which would otherwise lie waste. There seems noreason why many thousands of square miles of bush in the Sudan should not yield commercial rubber -- the cheap article that is required for a thousand and one uses inevery department of industry. Nor does there seem to be any reason why the whole production should not be undertaken by natives, since neither capital , skilled labour, nor machinery is needed .

Tropical Africa being unsuited for white coloniza tion, its development mustbe chiefly by native agency; notby the exploitationof the native for the good of the white man, nor by allowing him to continue in his lazy habits, but by introducing to him a phase of the world's competition, and fostering a taste for Euro pean goods - mainlythrough the establishment of rail ways — and by offering him the means of obtaining money with which tosatisfy his gradually increasing wants. Then the real development of the far interior ofthe Sudan will begin, andthrivingnative industries will be created, as they have been inthe coastal regions and elsewhere.

As regards future railway construction, upon which the development of the Upper Sudan almost wholly depends, the most important project is the extension of the Cape-to -Cairo railway, or, as an alternative, the improvement of the existing rail and steamer trans port system by the construction of a short line from Rejafºto Nimule (see above, p . 84 ) . As previously pointed out , the most feasible Cape-to -Cairo route,