africa's strategic minerals in wwii

Africa's Strategic Minerals During the Second World WarAuthor(s): Raymond DumettReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 26, No. 4, World War II and Africa (1985), pp.381-408Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/181656 .

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Yournal of African History, 26 (I985), pp. 381T408 38I Printed in Great Britain

AFRICA'S STRATEGIC MINERALS DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR*

BY RAYMOND DUMETT

THAT the Second World War acted as a potent force for economic change in many parts of Africa is beyond dispute. Yet, despite the impetus which the conflict gave to mineral exploitation, this phase is treated only cursorily in most general accounts of mining enterprise in Africa. The task in this preliminary survey is to analyze the relative magnitudes of war-induced change in the minerals sectors of the export economies of major producing countries - the Union of South Africa, the Belgian Congo, the two Rhodesias, the Gold Coast and Nigeria.' To focus on production and exports is not to minimize the disruptive and destabilizing effects of accelerated mining and attendant labour mobilization on broader economic and social change within particular countries, which have been the subjects of detailed monographs and articles. The extension of multinational economic imperialism as a result of the war emerges as an important secondary theme which deserves fuller treatment. Nor should the forgivable tendency of Anglophone scholars to view the mobilization of Africa's mineral resources primarily in the positive light of the Allied victory over Axis totalitarianism blind us to the colossal waste and destructive purpose in virtually all wartime metals fabrication and petro-chemical production by the belligerent powers.

From one important perspective the Second World War can be viewed as an economic struggle for the control and exploitation of the world's strategic minerals. Certainly the demands of total war called forth the extraction of raw materials - wood and vegetable products - as well as minerals, from all continents on an unprecedented scale. And the early success of German and Japanese offensives, which were influenced to a considerable extent by the drive to control raw materials, aroused great trepidation among the Allies.2 Despite pre-war self-sufficiency in basic ores, such as coal and iron, both the United States and Britain were compelled to augment existing mineral stocks in nearly every category - the base metals, the ferro-alloys, precious metals, gemstones, and the nonmetallic fuel and chemical elements - with imports from around the world. Since the Hitlerian empire dominated the continental heartland, the Allies had to develop Africa and other peripheral regions of the world to their utmost capacity. It was not only that copper, chrome, platinum, bauxite, zinc and manganese were required in vaster quantities than ever before. A host of new and specialized wartime instruments created a practical need for a wide range of minor minerals (antimony, beryllium,

* I would like to thank Andrew Roberts, Colin Newbury, Kenneth Vickery, Bruce Fetter and Jean Luc Vellut for comments on the article prior to publication.

1 There has not been space in this essay to consider such other important producing countries as Angola, Sierra Leone, Morocco and South West Africa.

2 John R. Suman 'Mineral needs of a world at war', Mining and Metallurgy, xxiii, no. 42I (I942), 9-44. E. W. Pehrson, 'War of strategic minerals: supplies of United Nations and Axis powers compared', The South African Mining and Engineering Journal [S.A.M.E.3.], 8 Oct. I942, III.



382 RAYMOND DUMETT

graphite, mica, talc and fluorspar) hitherto viewed mainly as exotic specimens for laboratory experiments or ornaments in rock collections. In none of these areas could Allied forces have met their requirements without reliance on African and other Third World countries.

If one of the enduring tests for the value of colonial empire was that of bolstering the resources of the mother country in time of war, then Britain's African and Asian dependencies, along with richly endowed Canada, met this criterion in I939-45. And the United States, despite its pre-war dominance in many categories (see Appendix, Table 3), was compelled none the less to import more than 2 billion dollars' worth of minerals from some 53 different countries, in which some i i Latin American nations and more than I 4 African territories figured prominently.3 Over the long haul the raw materials factor weighed against the Axis powers. At the peak of wartime production, the British Empire and the U.S.A. together commanded about 57 per cent (by value) of world minerals production, whereas Germany and her partners were very short of supplies in many strategic items. Against this must be set the importation and stockpiling of African and other world minerals during the pre-war period in which Germany participated heavily. But ultimate mastery over global resources was one of the key ingredients which Allied policy-makers counted on in their prescriptions for victory.

At the same time, I939 production figures and maps showing areas of nominal mineral control obscured several serious wartime problems for the Allies. One was that of safeguarding the flows of African and Asian minerals across the Atlantic to refineries in Britain and North America against the ravages of German U-boats.4 During the dangerous early war years, Britain not only was denied access to continental and Scandinavian minerals, but lost its control over vital South-east Asian tin, bauxite and tungsten supplies as a result of the Japanese conquest of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies in I 942.

Furthermore, even though Germany was extremely weak in many essential minerals - notably petroleum, industrial diamonds, copper, chrome, molybdenum, tungsten, tin and vanadium (see Appendix, Table i) - it compen- sated for this to a considerable degree by its head start over the Allies in rearmament, by the conquest of mineral bearing territories in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (which increased its control over pre-war mineral- producing territories from i i to I4 per cent), and by remarkable ingenuity in the development of synthetics.5

Africa's minerals played a role in Allied rearmament and wartime munitions production that far exceeded the continent's political importance and general level of economic development. Indeed, it is possible to argue, because of its dominance in the supply of certain critical minerals, that African production was absolutely essential for the Allied war effort. During the peak years of the war, Africa supplied 50 per cent of the world's gold, I9 per cent of the world's manganese, 39 per cent of the chromite, about 24 per cent of vanadium, about I 7 per cent of the copper, close to go per cent of the cobalt,

3 Alan M. Bateman, 'Wartime dependence on foreign minerals', Economic Geology, XLI, no. 4, Pt. I (I 946), 3 I 2.

4 Joel Hurstfield, 'The Control of Raw Materials' Official History of the Second World War, ed. W. K. Hancock (London, I953), 2I4-I5, 22I.

5 C. K. Leith, J. W. Furness and Cleona Lewis, World Minerals and World Peace (Washington, D.C., I943) 5I-3; Suman, 'Mineral needs', 9-I3.



AFRICA S STRATEGIC MINERALS 383

all of the uranium and, perhaps most importantly, 98 per cent of the world's industrial diamonds. As the statistics (see Appendix, Table 2) show, Africa's contribution to world production made quantum advances between the pre-war period, the middle war years and the post-war decades. This was attributable not only to the extreme demands of the war itself but also to the fact that advanced metallurgical research begun during the war created new peacetime as well as military needs which became self-sustaining. Thus, even in areas where the U.S.A. had been self-sufficient before the war, such as copper and molybdenum, new supplies from the southern hemisphere had to be explored and gouged up in enormous quantities.

I

The Union of South Africa suffered very little economic adversity or dislocation from the Second World War. Although a belligerent on the Allied side, the Union lay well outside the war zone. And while South African troops fighting overseas suffered high casualties, production on farms and factories as well as in the mines moved forward almost without a break. Domestic industry expanded not only to meet the demands for war material, but also to compensate for numerous categories of local consumer goods previously imported. Thus, for South Africa, in a way that differed from most other African countries, expanded wartime mineral production was part of a general and longer trend of economic growth and transformation; between I939 and I945, the real value of manufacturing output nearly doubled.

South Africa retained its pre-war position as the leading producer and exporter of gold on the African continent. In the I930s, the ioo per cent rise in the world price for gold (following devaluation of currencies throughout the world) had generated about CIo8 9 million in new capital invested in gold mining from I933 to I942.6 The enlarged dimensions of the gold industry with its demands on labour and machines were also reflected in the quantities of pulverized rock, which rose from about 4-6 million tons a month in I939

to 5-3 million tons per month in I942.7

The lion's share of South Africa's wartime gold production was shipped to Britain, where it was badly needed to maintain reserves and meet trade deficits. It is interesting to note, however, that the continued emphasis on gold production at the expense of other strategic minerals during a time of dire emergency did not sit particularly well with the Allies. The U.S.A. which was especially short of ferro-alloys - many of which had never been used in large quantities before the war - sent a special mission to Johannesburg in I942 in an effort to prod the South African mining industry into shifting manpower and capital from gold to other more strategically important metals production.8

Gold production reached a peak of I4,407,649 fine oz. in I94I, and thereafter levelled off (see Fig. i). The explanation is to be found in a number

6 S. H. Frankel, Investment and the Return to Equity Capital, I887-1965 (Oxford, I 967), 2I.

7 Duncan Innes, Anglo American and the Rise of Modern South Africa (London, I984), 246.

8 Economist, 3 Oct. I942, 4I8-9; 'Policy and personnel of the U.S. economic mission to South Africa', S.A.M.E.J., io Oct. I942, I I 5-I 6.

I 3 AFH 26



384 RAYMOND DUMETT

50

40

0

30 0 A

E /. c 0

o 20 _

_---- - - -o ---__

10- South Africa

Southern Rhodesia Gold Coast

O 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

Fig. i. Gold production, 1930-50.

of contingencies which were related to the war. There was a continued drain of skilled and supervisory labour from mining to military service, and it proved difficult to train new men to fill their places. There were also shortages of high-quality ore owing to long-term exhaustion of surface layers at a number of mines. Increases in working and milling costs combined with a decline in production led to reduced profits.9 Thus, at the height of the war gold mining was slow to attract new capital, and the opening of new properties became restricted. Finally a number of machine shops attached to gold mines were turned over to munitions production, locomotive repair, and manufacture of spare parts for tanks which made a substantial contribution to the Commonwealth war effort in North Africa and the Burma-India theatre.10 None the less, South African gold production remained an essential part of Allied wartime economic strategy. Indeed, Britain ordered a number of large shipments of South African gold direct to the U.S.A. to help pay for debts incurred by lend-lease and a glance at the table shows that the downward slide of gold production eased off during the last year of the war.

9 Economist, IS May 1943, 630-I. 10 'Rand mines improvised munitions factories for war effort', Transvaal Chamber of

Mines, Mining Survey (1946), i, i, I8-I9.




South Africa also became the third largest platinum producing country in the world during the I930S and I940S, ranking behind Canada and the Soviet Union. Platinum provides an interesting example of a product which was regarded almost entirely as a precious metal before I939, transformed into a high priority industrial item during the war. Because of its extremely high melting point, resistance to acids, ductility, malleability and the lowest expansion coefficient of any metal, there was a heavy wartime demand for platinum in the electrical (electronic tubes, magnetos, fuses, and sparkplugs) and chemical industries (as a catalyst in making explosives), so that shipments of the refined South African product to Britain and the U.S.A. reached a peak of 85,730 Oz. in I94I.11 After this, production fluctuated at a downward rate until a bottom of 53, I 76 oz. was reached in I 945. Production picked up again in the immediate postwar years to a high of I44,2I7 Oz. in I950. Under extra pressure from the United States for a shift to iron alloys, the Union also expanded chrome, manganese, vanadium and copper production, but these were not among her major mineral exports during the war.

In any history of Africa's minerals diamonds merit a central place. The overriding aim of the international diamond trade had always been to maintain stable world prices by carefully controlling the quantities of diamonds that reached the market during a given period. By the early I920S

this monopolistic marketing system had fallen under the control of 'the Big Four' producers headed by Ernest Oppenheimer's Anglo American Corporation, and in I930 the Diamond Corporation Ltd was established as the marketing agency of the syndicate. With a controlling power over De Beers, the Anglo American Corporation, the Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa plus the Diamond Corporation, there was scarcely a decision on world diamond production or trade that could take place without Oppenheimer's knowledge or approval. As early as I 922 an arrangement had been signed with the Belgian diamond producers of Kasai province (Forminiere) whereby their great output of Congo diamonds would also be marketed through the London-based Diamond Corporation.'2

The Second World War had a tremendous impact on the African diamond industry, particularly in the production and sale of industrial diamonds and 'bort' (low quality industrials). It can be argued, indeed, that diamonds were the continent's most vital contribution to the war effort since, as one source noted, 'there is no important war weapon used by our forces that does not employ the diamond in its manufacture'.'3 Increased world demand was in part the result of new manufacturing technology which had been introduced before the war. Because of the wider use of stronger steel alloys, it required especially hard diamond drill bits and diamond-studded grinding wheels to shape parts. Furthermore, industrial diamonds, unlike gemstones, were actually 'consumed' (worn out) at an extremely rapid rate.

" It is interesting to note that the Axis countries produced no platinum at all during the war, though Germany had stockpiled substantial quantities (mainly of Russian origin) before Juine I94I. 'Platinum as war material', Economist, I2 Sept. I942, 343, also I May I943, 57I.

12 Theodore Gregory, Ernest Oppenheimer and the Economic Development of Southern Africa (Oxford, I962), 82-IOO; Edward Jessup, Ernest Oppenheimer (London, I979), 2I4.

13 United States Government, Department of the Interior: Bureau of Mines, The Minerals Yearbook for 1943 (Washington, D.C., I943), I567.

I3-2



386 RAYMOND DUMETT

A single diamond-tipped drill of the newer type might contain as many as I78 tiny stones. There had been a major upswing of 22 per cent (by weight) in world diamond production between I937 and I938 with the major stimulus coming from the pre-war arms race. But this was nothing compared with the thrust of the war itself. Before the hostilities the U.S.A. used on the average about i ,250,000 carats of industrial diamonds per year; in I94I it was 3,000,000; by I943, the figure was Io,ooo,ooo.14

Making the most of their African connexions, the Allies dominated diamond output during the Second World War. Major contributors to the world supply of industrial diamonds were the Belgian Congo (65-5 per cent), the Gold Coast (io per cent) and Sierra Leone (9 per cent).'5 Surprising though it may seem, South Africa did not yet have a great capacity for the production of industrials. Furthermore, many diamond mines in and around Kimberley were shut down or switched over to munitions production during the war. The British government urged Oppenheimer to explore new sources for industrial diamonds; but the tycoon was adamant in refusing to open up any new South African mines. The London-based Diamond Corporation still had huge reserves of gemstones accumulated during the the depression, and Oppenheimer offered to sell these high quality diamonds to industrial users at supposedly bargain 'pre-war prices'. Later the U.S. government tried to bring a lawsuit against De Beers and Forminiere under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but failed to build a tenable case.16 The world's largest diamond exporters (all African) in the order of their importance at the end of the war were the Belgian Congo, where mines yielded over io million metric carats in I945, South Africa, where the mines produced I,222,945

metric carats, the Gold Coast with 8I2,450 metric carats, Angola with a production quota of 8oI,887 metric carats, and Sierra Leone with 504,309

metric carats. (In Fig. 2, diamond production for the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone are combined under West Africa.) As might have been expected, diamond exports levelled off in all of the leading African producing countries at the end of the war, but advanced again after I 950. There is no doubt that World War II set the industrial diamond industry of Africa on its modern course.

Equally impressive was the expansion in South African wartime production of a wide range of base minerals and alloys, including iron ore, copper, limestone, chrome, manganese and coal. It is a well-known fact that the continent of Africa is more deficient in coal than any other mineral: at the outbreak of the Second World War, the continent accounted for i per cent

14 Sydney H. Ball, 'The rise of industrial diamonds', S.A.M.E.J., 3 Oct, I942, 95. Also Minerals Yearbook for 1939, I392; for 1940, I284; and for 1943, I568.

'5 Other world diamond producers in I942-3 were Angola (8-4 per cent), Brazil (3 5 per cent) and South West Africa (0-4 per cent). One of the remarkable stories of the war is how the German and Japanese war industries functioned as well as they did when the Allies controlled perhaps go per cent of the world's diamond sites. The Axis acquired its meagre supplies of industrial diamonds from pre-war stocks, from French Guinea (controlled by Vichy), Borneo (controlled by Japan), smuggling from Brazil and xenezuela and by the confiscation of diamond jewellery from German citizens and the victims of the war. (S. W. Ball, 'The diamond industry in wartime', S.A.M.E.J., i9 Sept, 1942,

47). 16 Gregory, 322-5; Jessup, 2I8. The charge of possible discrimination against the

U.S.A. on the sale of industrial diamonds was raised, but not proven, in New York newspapers at the time and in the Economist, 4 Sept. I943, 343; 25 Sept. I943, 440.




16

14-

12 -

10 --

o L I ' ,,, \

1930 13 1

Fig. . DimnIrdcto,I30

near Pretoria (which accounted for 40 per cent of the country's autpata

LI~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

labour,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ aln ihpetflsple,wr h est nokn atwat

4 /

aon against aBrtisprcBritish a a a a West Africa

2 -

-

South Africa 0 945. - 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

Fig. 2. Diamond production, 1930-50.

of the world's total coal output with South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and Nigeria the only producers. Still, the Union's coal reserves were estimated at over 6o,ooo million metric tons.'7 The largest coalfields were at Witbank, near Pretoria (which accounted for 40 per cent of the country's output), Vryheid in Natal and Vereeniging in the Orange Free State. Once again cheap labour, along with plentiful supplies, were the keys to unlocking vast wealth and new markets. Thus, in the Orange Free State and Natal accessible deposits and extremely low wages put the pithead price of coal at 6s. to 9s. per ton against a British price Of 45S. per ton. South African coal output advanced from I4-6 million short tons produced in I935 to over 25 million tons by 1945.18"

Long before the outbreak of war South African officials and economists had drawn attention to the country's overreliance on gold, a wasting resource, and had called for a commitment to economic diversification and balanced growth based on state support for heavy and secondary industries. One result was the creation of the Iron and Steel Industrial Corporation (ISCOR) by act of parliament in 1928. Vast deposits of coal and iron (reserves estimated

17 D. Hobart Houghton, The South African Economy (Cape Town, I 964; 4th edn, I 976), 30.

18 P. E. Hall, 'The coal industry in the Union of South Africa', South African Journal of Economics (S.A.J.E.), xvi, no. 3 (0948), 24I, 248.



388 RAYMOND DUMETT

at 8,ooo million tons), lying in close proximity to one another, made possible the rapid expansion of the industry at relatively low costs. Added to this were government regulations against foreign dumping which allowed ISCOR to set its own minimum prices and to ensure that its full output would be taken up by the South African market.19 Important as were these earlier trends, it is also true that the Second World War coupled with a protectionist policy spurred the diversified development of South African iron and steel together with other secondary manufacturing industries. Production rose to a wartime peak of 866,107, metric tons in 1945. More directly pertinent to the study at hand, South African steel output contributed directly to the victory of British and Commonwealth forces in several sectors of the war, in the form of steel casings for bombs and shells, gun and tank parts, and structural steel for such projects as floating pontoons and aircraft hangars.20 In the words of one authority 'the rapid build-up of South African industrial production after I940 was important and impressive. The iron and steel industry certainly proved itself to be strategic to national defence and the key-supplier to a growing engineering industry '.21

A further aspect of World War munitions, which forged the long-term strategic minerals connexion between South Africa and the U.S.A., was the development of uranium. It had long been known that uranium existed in residues of the liquid concentrates that were the end-product of gold and silver production at the Rand Mines. In 1944, as the U.S. 'Manhattan' Atomic Bomb project neared its climax, a team of American geologists travelled to Johannesburg to determine the uranium potentialities of the region; and it was subsequently found that South Africa had the largest reserves in the world. An interesting feature of production was that because the mineral was found in conjunction with gold ore, no direct mining for uranium was necessary. It was not until the I950S that treatment plants for separating uranium from liquid concentrates could be activated.22 At a peak in the I96os uranium sales receipts at some seventeen plants augmented Transvaal gold-mining profits by close to ?50,000,o0o a year.

That South Africa's substantial gold and general mineral profits were made possible by the exploitative system of the labour colour bar - in which the wages of unskilled African workers were pared to the bone - is an established fact. During the period I935-45 the size of the non-white labour force employed in the mining industry increased by I9 per cent from 339,702 to 404, 563 .23 Although the Transvaal Chamber of Mines was pleased to record a marked improvement in the daily output of miners through improved technology, black mine workers did not share in the rising profits of economic

19 F. Meyer, 'The Development of the Iron and Steel Industry in South Africa',

S.A.7.E., xx, no. 2 (1952), 103. 20 W. A. Pitts, ' A. industry - past and future: its achievements in the war period',

S.A.M.E.J., 2 Feb. I946, 561-3. 21 Ralph Horwitz, The Political Economy of South Africa (London, 1967), 259-61. 22 'The world's uranium supplies - difficulties of effective control', S.A.M.E.J., lO

Nov. I945, 239. A. P. Cartwright, Golden Age: The Story of the Industrialization of South

Africa ..., I9IO-I967 (Capetown, I968), 264.

23 Union of South Africa: Office of Census and Statistics. Report no. I58, Employment

in Secondary Industry, Mining and Transportion, I925-I945 (Pretoria 1946), 7.




expansion in the I930S and I940s.24 Indeed, the increased employment in the mining sector of new African workers (drawn chiefly outside the Union from the High Commission territories) had the effect of depressing the real wages of older non-white workers rather than improving them. The Chamber of Mines regarded the demands of the African Mine Workers Union for ten shillings a day basic wage as irresponsible and declared that had the petition for higher wages succeeded it would have led to the wholesale closure of mines.25

Hitherto African mineworkers living under the close supervision of the compound system had not been well organized nor politicized. But feelings of resentment aroused throughout the war, combined with a poor maize harvest and food shortages in I945, led African miners to join with other black proletarians - dockers, railwaymen and bricklayers - in the 'Great Strike' of August I 946. These were significant early rumblings.26 Economic expansion achieved during the late I930S and throughout the war, coupled with the growing movement to the cities, aggravated and exposed the glaring social and political inequalities at the base of the South African system.

II

In both the quantity and wide range of forest and mineral products which it supplied, the Belgian Congo contributed more to the Allied strategic raw materials drive than any other African country. Whereas a major portion of Northern Rhodesia's mineral exports were sent direct to the United Kingdom, the Congo became a primary supplier to the U.S.A. and Britain of copper, cobalt, industrial diamonds, tin, gold, silver and uranium. The political and economic condition of the Congo in the first year of the war was unique. As a result of advance preparation by the Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga and the International Copper Buyers Association, Germany's invasion of Belgium in May I 940 had disrupted the flow of the Congo's minerals to the West only slightly and for a brief period. Even before Germany attacked the Low Countries, Britain had set up a sea blockade around Belgium to prevent a stockpiling of precision metals from Africa that might later fall into Axis hands. At the same time Union Miniere took extra precautions by opening branch offices in New York, Lisbon and Cape Town, and by shifting the smelting of raw copper from its main plant at Hoboken, near Antwerp, to its Panda plant in Katanga and to smelters in New York State.27 While some

24 'Research increases efficiency of Rand native mine workers', Mining Survey (April, I947), I, 4, IO-I I. The corollary to the successful demands of white workers for higher wages was that the only way to maintain low costs of production was to keep wages to black miners down to a minimum. (C. S. Richards, 'The task before us', S.A.M.E.J., xii, no. 2 (Sept. I944), I96-7).

25 Francis Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines I9II-I969 (Cambridge, I972), 53-4. In I944 the Economist called upon South Africa to increase the wages of black mine workers, which it said averaged one-tenth that paid to their white counterparts (Economist, 2 I Oct. I 944, 5 5 ) .

26 'Trade unions against interest of Rand gold mines', Mining Survey, I, 3 (Nov. I 946), 9. Edward Roux, Time Longer Than Rope (Madison, Wisconsin, I948, I964), 336-42.

27 Union Miniere du Haut Katanga Monographie, I956 (Elizabethville, I956), I87-9. Minerals Yearbook for I940, 99.



390 RAYMOND DUMETT

of the same motives for economic collaboration with Nazi Germany as existed in France also infected the business and industrial classes of Belgium,28 such pro-Axis sentiments were not translated into policy in the Belgian Congo. Instead the governor-general, Pierre Ryckmans, backed by the officers of the colonial army, withstood a movement to take the Congo out of the war as a neutral state and declared his full support for the Allied cause.29

With the cut-off of further trade with Nazi-occupied Belgium, a substantial part of the Union Miniere production was diverted to the U.S.A., where the Nichols Copper Company of New York remained a primary purchaser. These and other arrangements for the sale of vital Congo raw materials (vegetable products as well as minerals) were validated in economic agreements signed by the Belgian government in exile with Britain and the U.S.A. in I94I.30 The international sales and business of the company, normally conducted from Brussels, were turned over to a U.S. based subsidiary called the African Metals Corporation. Meanwhile those U.S. and Canadian manufacturing firms who wished to export machinery and goods to the Congo worked through a consortium called the Belgian Congo Purchasing Commission. Coordinating everything after I942 - shipping to and from the Congo, and allotments of minerals to the U.S., U.K. and Canada- was the Allied Combined Raw Materials Board centered in Washington D.C., which worked in close cooperation with various U.S. government agencies.3'

An intriguing area for detailed historical research, which has just begun to open up, concerns the wartime impetus given to American and multinational, neocolonial penetration in Africa.32 Indeed, there was a prevalent rumour in the Congo that the country might become a dependency of the U.S.A. after the war.33 As the Belgian minister for colonies in exile put it in I 943, 'exchanges between the Colony and North America developed beyond all expectations'.34 Aided by hefty injections of Canadian and U.S. capital (exporters of machine tools to the Congo reaped an especially good profit from the war), Union Miniere stepped up mechanization in order to increase the yields on known ore bodies in Katanga as rapidly as possible. A number of mines kept in reserve during the low copper prices of the early and mid- I 930s

28 See, for example, A. S. Milward, The New Order and the French Economy (Oxford, I970), and John B. Gillingham, Belgian Business in the Nazi New Order (Ghent, I977).

29 Bruce Fetter, The Creation of Elizabethville, I9I0-I940 (Stanford, I976), I75. Also Monographie, I956, I87-9.

30 By the Anglo-Belgian Trade Agreement Britain guaranteed to purchase substantial quantitites of copper, tin and vital forest products, such as palm oil and cotton, from the Congo at fixed exchange rates. Ralph E. Birchard, 'Copper in the Katanga region of the Belgian Congo', Economic Geography, xvi (Oct. 1940), 429-36; 'Congo in the Sterling bloc', Economist, i Feb. 1941, 214-15. Arthur Wauters, The Belgian Congo, Reservoir of the Allies (London, 1942), V-Vi.

31 S. M. Rosen, The Combined Boards of the Second World War (New York, I 951), 3-15,

48-53, and passim. 32 See, for example, R. Graham, 'United States imperial interests in West Africa during

the Second World War' and G. A. Sekgoma, 'World War II and the Sierra Leonean economy: some aspects of labor employment and utilization, I939-I945 ', and other papers delivered at the conference on Africa and the Second World War, SOAS, London, 24-25

May I984. 33 Among Congolese in the Matadi and Leopoldville (Kinshasa) areas it was rumoured

that the United States would take over the Congo after the war. (Personal communication with Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, London, May I984.)

3 Belgian Congo and the United States of America: Directory (New York, I943), 45.



AFRICA S STRATEGIC MINERALS 39I

were now opened up. At the four mines of Prince Leopold, Kambove, Luishia and Kakanda in the central zone, and at Kolwezi and Ruwe in the western zone, giant electric powered shovels and locomotives were used to extract and transport copper ore from open pit mines at record levels. New machinery and treatment facilities for the conversion of copper matte to raw copper and for the electrolytic refining of cobalt were also constructed. This relaxed some of the strain on overseas transport by reducing the tonnage of raw copper and matte in favour of the lighter smelter copper which could be shipped directly to North American buyers. In I939 the copper output of Union Miniere had been I22,649 metric tons; by I945 the producing capacity had increased to i 6o,ooo tons per year35 (see Fig. 3). That output levelled off despite continued wartime demand was traceable in part to the shortage of needed coal supplies from Southern Rhodesia's Wankie colleries. Space does not permit a full summary of the Congo's staggering range of wartime mining operations, some of which are noted in other sections of this essay. Tin production, controlled by the Belgian Tin Mining and Exploration Company (Geomines), nearly doubled as a result of new wartime demands, reaching a peak of I 7,480 long tons in I943.36 Industrial diamond production was centered in Kasai province under the direction of the Societe Internationale Forestiere et Miniere du Congo (Forminiere) with its operations at Tshikapa and Bushi- maie. With production soaring to I0,386,000 metric tons in I945 the Congo alone supplied over 65 per cent of Allied needs for industrial diamonds and bort during the war (see Fig. 2).

In the Congo as elsewhere in Africa's mineral enclaves, the demands of accelerated wartime production put unusual pressures on the indigenous labour employed in the mines and smelters. By the late 1920S, UMHK had abandoned earlier policies of forced labour recruitment, low pay and harsh discipline in favour of more progressive and economically effective programmes of long term contracts, incentives and welfare services.37 Despite a jarring cutback in their labour force during the great depression, which had led to rioting by laid-off workers, the company's return to the 'stabilizing policy' of welfare services and long-term contracts proved successful during the mid-I930s and into the Second World War. True, the labour-intensive nature of mining is seen in the relatively small size of the Union Miniere's labour force which grew from just 8,787 in I935 to I9,9I8 in I943.38 But in 1940 a remarkable rate of 77 per cent renewals beyond the initial three-year contract period was recorded. Similar labour stabilization policies were adopted by Forminiere and other companies. On the other hand, as Perrings has suggested, earlier studies oversimplified in their description of the UMHK's stabilization policy. The programme of welfare and incentives was geared only to the skilled workers. More than 25 per cent of Union Miniere's work force was made up of unskilled, short-term contract labourers who in the late I930S were paid at the extremely low rate of just over 2 francs per

35 Comite Special du Katanga: Rapports et Bilans, (Brussels, I954), 34. 36 'Tin in the Belgian Congo', Rhodesian Mining Journal (March I948), 83. 3' Roger Anstey, King Leopold's Legacy: The Congo under Belgian Rule (London, I966),

I I I; Fetter, Creation of Elizabethville 72-94; 122-6; Charles Perrings, Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (London, I979), 77-87.

38 Because of the relatively low population density of Katanga, a majority of the 1930S and 1940S work force came from the Lamani and Kasai provinces. Union Minie're du Haut-Katanga: Monographie I944 (Elizabethville, 1944), i6.



392 RAYMOND DUMETT

day. This encouragement of rapid turnover for cheap unskilled labour also fitted the company's grand design for maintaining labour control through hierarchy and dependency.39 Complaints about low wages, along with other grievances by skilled workers, ignited the Katanga miners' strike which was suppressed amidst great violence (48 killed) by company soldiers in December I94I.

The part played by the Union Miniere in furnishing supplies of uranium for the experiments which led to the atomic bomb also deserves brief mention. In October I 940 the company's director, Edgar Sengier, reacting to Nazi confiscation of mineral supplies in Belgium, decided to ship all uranium ore stockpiled in Katanga to New York through the African Metals Corporation. This I,200 tons of high quality Congo ore plus small quantities of ore from Canada and U.S. were practically all that the U.S. atomic scientists had to work with on the Manhattan project up through I 944.40 Thus African uranium was essential for the experiments that led directly to the atomic bomb. To the chagrin of British scientists, who needed supplies of U-23 5 for their own atomic project, the I 940 shipment was followed by a long hiatus in which production in the Congo was shut down owing to massive flooding at the lower levels of Katanga's Shinkolobwe mine, plus a shortage of skilled labour which UMHK was loathe to divert from copper and other strategic minerals production. Furthermore the UMHK imposed a difficult condition on the Allies in the form of requests for subsidies in reopening the mines. It was only after protracted negotiations by the 'Development Trust', a sub-division of the Anglo American Combined Raw Materials Board, coupled with pressure from the Belgian government, that UMHK finally agreed to reopen its major uranium mines in late I 944.41 This and subsequent agreements for the exclusive sale of up to io,ooo tons of Congo uranium ore to both Britain and U.S.A. were of importance for post-war atomic energy development.

Cobalt was a third strategic mineral, in addition to uranium and diamonds, in which the continent of Africa developed a virtual monopoly during and after the Second World War. In I939, in order to compensate for its modest domestic supplies, the United States government had asked Union Miniere if it could step up existing production schedules.42 The request was well-timed, for during the war cobalt came into constant demand as an alloy in tools requiring high-speed cutting steels. Secondary uses were in the ceramic industry, in the preparation of paints and varnishes, in making magnets, and as a catalyst. But Africa figured in the cobalt story in another way. Germany and Japan were particularly deficient in domestic cobalt resources, and except for the brief success in scavenging production in the satellite territories of French Morocco (lost to the Allies in I942), Finland (lost in I944) and Burma (retaken by Britain in I945), the Axis would have been at a loss for this important element. In any case the Belgian Congo and Northern

39 Perrings, Black Mineworkers, 126-8. 40 At a time when the topic was hushed in secrecy in the U.S.A., Sengier learned of

the great potential military importance of uranium and of current breakthroughs in nuclear physics from casual conversations with British and French scientists (Arthur H. Compton, Atomic Quest (New York, 1956), 96-7.)

41 Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy (Toronto and New York, I964), 299,

307, 310-I1. 42 Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga: Monographie, 1950 (Elizabethville, 1950), 29.




Rhodesia remained the leading cobalt suppliers to the Allies throughout the war. Because the mineral occurred not only by itself but also in conjunction with certain high-grade copper ores, the UMHK could mine and extract both minerals simultaneously. The main mines wete at Luiswishi, Kabolela and Kamoto. After the war cobalt, because of its heat-resistant qualities, came into still greater prominence as an essential constituent in jet engines and in nuclear weapons propulsion systems. Nowhere was the appetite of the Allied war machine for Africa's strategic minerals seen more vividly than in the U.S. consumption figures for imported cobalt (chiefly from the Congo) which grew by more than i,ooo per cent - from I,803,542 lb in I938 to a peak of 20,933,59I lb in I943.43

III

During the war, Northern Rhodesia was the most important African supplier of a single base metal for the Allied cause. And there is no doubt that the resurgence of the Zambian copper industry owed much to wartime demand. Copper played a fundamental part in the slaughter of the war with hundreds of thousands of pounds of the red metal devoured by the assembly lines that made brass cartridges and cannon shells. Thousands of miles of copper wiring were required for the complex electrical systems in aircraft, tanks and warships, while copper tubing was essential for refrigeration units, plumbing and other heat transfer devices. While the U. S.A. made up its own deficiences, primarily from western hemisphere countries (Canada, Chile, and Mexico) as well as from the Congo, Britain was greatly dependent on supplies from Northern Rhodesia and South Africa; and it is unlikely that the British could have stayed in the war without copper from these sources."

Large-scale mining, from sulphide ores, on the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt was developed by subsidiaries of the Anglo American Corporation and of Rhodesian Selection Trust (in which the American Metal Company had a controlling interest from I930).45 The slump proved only a passing setback and, largely in response to rising demand from the British electrical and automotive industries, copper production in Northern Rhodesia doubled between I932 and I934.46 Rearmament programmes gave them a further boost in the later I930S (see Fig. 3), and Northern Rhodesia soon moved into fourth place among the world's producers.47 War sustained the demand, and as in other mineral industries it induced technological innovations. Whereas before the war extraction of both copper and cobalt from the same ore had been effected mainly by the differential flotation method, by the end of the war and into the I950S more and more copper was produced by electrolysis from segregated concentrates. Overall, from I 935 to I 945, Northern Rhodesia contributed some 2,300,000 tons of refined copper to buttress Britain's

43 Minerals Yearbooks for 1940, 612;for 1944;for 1948, 403. 44 'Copper supplies', Economist, I5 Aug. 1942, 210-I I.

45 B. W. Alford and C. E. Harvey, 'Copperbelt merger: the formation of the Rhokana Corporation', Business History Review, LIV, I (Spring I 980), 330-8. Gregory, Oppenheimer, 391-4I9.

46 L. H. Gann, 'The Northern Rhodesian copper industry and the world of copper, 1923-1952, Rhodes-Livingstone3tournal, no. i8 (1955), 8; Elena Berger, Labour, Race and Colonial Rule: the Copperbelt from I924 to Independence (Oxford, 1974), 238.

47 A. R. Harrison, 'Copper mining in the war years: review of Rhokana activities', S.A.M.E.Y., i6 Feb. 1946, 603-4.



394 RAYMOND DUMETT

500

400 -

D 300 - Total African C:

0

Z, 200- N. Rhodesia, .4/ 1''," ... .

. ,' Belgian Congo 100_ / . .

~ 20 / N. hoesi ', -

100 J I Bega Congo .

0 l_ _ _ _ _ _ _ __I_ _ _I_

1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

Fig. 3. Copper production, 1930-50.

munition needs. In the early years of the war, North America supplied over half of Britain's copper, but by I945 Northern Rhodesia supplied 68 per cent.48 Meanwhile the size of the labour force employed in the copper mines rose from I,000 Europeans and 7,200 Africans in I933 to 2,600 and 24,000

by I939, and again to 3,400 and 36,ooo in I943 .4

As a consequence of the high degree of government intervention in the copper industry during the war, Northern Rhodesia functioned almost as a direct appendage of the British war economy. The old London-based Metals Corporation, a private marketing organization, was now placed directly under the British Ministry of Supply - with its former managing director, Oliver Lyttelton, ensconced as Controller of Non-Ferrous Metals. The directors of the Rhodesian Selection Trust and Rhodesian Anglo American acquiesced in a programme that geared everything to production and very little to profit. That the British Metals Corporation contracted to purchase the whole of Northern Rhodesia's copper output at fixed prices undoubtedly saved the United Kingdom millions of pounds during the war,50 but it severely

48 Berger, Labour, Race and Colonial Rule, 54. 4' Northern Rhodesia, Economic and Statistical Bulletin (April 1948), Table XVIII, 3I.

XVIII, 31.

50 Andrew D. Roberts, 'Notes towards a financial history of copper mining in Northern Rhodesia', Canadian Journal of African Studies, XVI, 2, (i 982), 350-I.




curtailed the industry's ability to reinvest profits in new plant and equipment. It is true that a direct loan from the British Ministry of Supply helped finance the expansion of Anglo American's new Nchanga Consolidated Mines so that production rose from 6,ooo tons in I 940 to 20,000 in I 944. But this was more than offset by the draconian wartime excess profits tax, imposed on the orders of Whitehall, which stifled reinvestment and improvements in other sectors of the industry. Whereas in I937-8, taxes paid by the three main producing mines of Nkana, Roan Antelope and Mulfulira averaged I 7 per cent of their operating surpluses, by 194I the figure was 67 per cent.51 Nor were these new taxes necessarily distributed for the betterment of the people or the country as a whole. While it is extremely difficult to calculate the total benefit to Britain that accrued from harsh imperial taxes on company profits, it would appear that the drain to Britain ran well above C5 million over the course of the war.52

Despite improvements, then, the response of the Rhodesian copper industry to wartime conditions did not lead to the spectacular 'boom' that some observers had expected. Copper production rose from 143,501 tons in I935 to a wartime peak of 262,394 metric tons in I940; from 1943 it declined to only I 82,289 in I 946. Among the external constraints were the heavy taxes exacted by both the British and Northern Rhodesian governments and the wartime price freeze imposed by the British Metals Corporation, all of which dampened entrepreneurial incentives. Among internal impediments were labour unrest, transportation blockages, coal shortages from Southern Rhodesia and the lack of capital for improving working efficiency in all sectors.53 In explaining the Rhokana Corporation's failure to meet increased quotas set by the Ministry of Supply, one manager cited worn-out equipment and the inability of the company's smelter to reduce the high silica content of its ore concentrates. All this forced up production costs and compelled some mines to operate below capacity.

The gap between supplies of copper and wartime requirements induced the Allies to search for alternatives; and it is not widely known that U.S. metallurgists developed aluminium as a substitute for copper in many aspects of aircraft construction and perfected new steel alloys in place of brass for shell casings and cartridges.54 Massive use of scrap metal offered another way out of the dilemma. By 1944, with Germany facing collapse, the Allies had stockpiled sufficient copper for the duration of the war so that Rhodesian and Congo exports levelled off, to burgeon again in the I950s.

Northern Rhodesia contributed many other minerals to the war effort. Thus the Broken Hill mine yielded important quantities of lead, zinc, and vanadium, while the Rhokana Company's Nkana mine produced cobalt, gold and silver as by-products of copper. As early as 1936 Northern Rhodesia was second to the Belgian Congo as a cobalt producer; together, the two countries

51 Figures summarize data in P. E. Barbour, 'Copper', in The Mineral Industry during I94I: its Statistics, Technology and Trade (New York and London, 1941), 165.

52 Roberts, 'Financial History', 354; 'Conditions in the Copperbelt', Economist, 22

Mar. 1941, 36-7. Barbour, 'Copper', I65-6. 53 Harrison, 'Copper mining in the war years', 603-4. F. L. Coleman, The Northern

Rhodesia Copperbelt, I899-I962, 143-4. Manchester, 1971. P. E. Barbour, 'Copper', I65-6.

54 B. W. Ganser and C. A. Reichelderfer, 'Nonferrous physical metallurgy: new processes, new tools and new methods of fabrication meet wartime needs', Mining and Metallurgy (1943), 104.



396 RAYMOND DUMETT

supplied about 8o per cent of the world total. Zinc and lead were also produced in a wide variety of forms during the war (rolled, in slabs, powdered, paste and liquid) which served as basic ingredients in manufactured rubber, paints, storage batteries, ceramics, insecticides, ink and floor cover- ings. Zinc production in both Northern Rhodesia (over i 5,000 metric tons in I 945) and the Congo rose significantly during the war, but Africa remained a minor contributor to the world total, ranking behind all the other continents.

Northern Rhodesia's output of vanadium may seem modest (the wartime peak, in I943, was only 738 metric tons), but it was absolutely essential to U.S. and British war manufactures. Vanadium is a very rare metal on the earth's surface, and the qualities it imparted to high-speed tools and ultra-strength steel forgings made it one of the most highly prized of the African ferro-alloys during the war. Northern Rhodesia ranked fourth on a very short list of world vanadium producers which included Peru, the U.S.A., and South West Africa, followed by Mexico and Argentina. Together, the two African countries produced 24 per cent of the world total. The value of Northern Rhodesia's total mineral production doubled and redoubled from the mid-I930's through to the post-war period: in I936 the figure was ?6,375,929; by I950 it had soared to C48,702,I42.55

One can argue that the wartime output of the Copperbelt owed more to the improved skills and energy of the labour forces of the African mines than to new investment in labour-saving machinery. Although some African workers at the copper mines, unlike railway and other industrial workers, did gain the opportunity of moving up the ladder to skilled and semi-skilled positions, this concession was made only after African strikes in I940; and management made very limited improvements during the war in conditions of housing or wages.56

The upshot of wartime production in both the Belgian Congo and in Northern Rhodesia was to perpetuate growth without development. In Northern Rhodesia minerals accounted for over 90 per cent of all exports by value during the war years, and there were few positive spread effects from mining to other sectors of the economy. In the Belgian Congo the proportion of forest crop and agricultural production to mineral production was higher than in Northern Rhodesia; but a number of writers have reported how districts outside the Union Miniere and Forminiere mining zones were scavenged for labour recruitment (both for the mines and for the Force Publique) and saddled with imposed quotas (rubber, cotton and food crops) on peasant cultivation that were reminiscent of the Leopoldian system.57 Production figures from the Belgian Congo indicate aggregate economic growth, since many formerly subsistence areas were brought into export crop production for the first time.58 On the other hand, as Bustin has shown, this was accomplished at a fearful price, which included wholesale migration from

5 The Statesman's Yearbook for 1944, 240, I1951I, 301; Northern Rhodesia Economic and Statistical Bulletin (1948), table XIIL, 24-5.

56 Berger, Labour, Race and Colonial Rule, 54-65, 68-72, 83-7. 57 Mabiala Mantuba-Ngoma, 'La force publique et la guerre 1940-1943: 6volution

d'une mentalite', paper presented to the Conference on Africa and the Second World War, SOAS, London, 24-5 May, I 984.

58 Edward Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule (Cambridge, Mass., I975), I33-5I.

Anstey, King Leopold's Legacy, 143-57.




many villages to the mining towns, forced labour and production quotas administered by colonial officials and local chiefs, and the disruption of traditional social and cultural life. Thus the connexion between the farming and mineral extraction areas in the Congo was an artificial one and there was little integrated development. In Northern Rhodesia there continued to be an extreme contrast between the Copperbelt and the rest of the country due to basic differences in resource endowments and the weak forward and backward linkages of the mining industry.59

IV

Whereas wartime production in Northern Rhodesia focused predominantly on copper and its by-products, mining enterprise in Southern Rhodesia was considerably more diversified. Scattered alongside the geological formation known as the 'Great Dyke' which runs SSW to NNE across almost the whole of Zimbabwe were numerous deposits of a variety of ores. For, while Southern Rhodesia was known in this period as the second largest gold producer in the world after South Africa, it also gained substantial earnings from the export of chromite, asbestos, coal, silver and iron.

Rhodesian gold output had expanded greatly between I93i and I93 5, as a result of Britain's rejection of the gold standard, with more than i ,ooo new firms investing capital in the industry. Production moved forxvard steadily (except for one downswing) between 1935 and 1940, rising from 726,28I OZ.

to 826,485 oz., or an increase of I4 per cent.60 Apart from Britain's basic need for gold bullion, gold along with silver was put to many other wartime uses, including color photography, bearings, brazing alloys, silverware, dental and surgical uses, and military insignia. Most of this gold was transported by rail to Cape Town for passage to England whence much was shipped in the form of bars to the United States. As with the other leading African producers, Southern Rhodesia's gold output reached peak levels in the years I941-2 and thereafter subsided61 due to the reduced world price for gold, the decline of new investment in plant and equipment, and the diversion of manpower and machinery to more urgent wartime production areas.62

From the I920S Southern Rhodesia also ranked as the third largest producer of chrome ore in the world after the U.S.S.R. and Turkey. With the two latter sources largely cut off from the Atlantic powers during the war, Rhodesia and South Africa became the two most important suppliers for the United Nations forces. Once again the importance of Africa mirrored the extreme vulnerability of the U.S.A. and Britain in the secondary metals involved in steelmaking. Chrome, both in its solid state and as a chemical, had a remarkable set of uses ranging from the planting and anodyzing of aircraft frames to leather tanning for combat boots, camouflage paint and synthetic rubber manufacturing.63 Outstanding among Rhodesia's reserves

59 Robert E. Baldwin, Economic Development and Export Growth: A Study of Northern Rhodesia, I920-I960 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, I966), 63.

60 Minerals Yearbook for I938, 63; W. J. Barber, The Economy of British Central Africa (Stanford, I 96 I), i I 8.

61 'The rise and fall of the gold industry', Rhodesian Mining Journal (Feb. 1948), 43. 62 A. W. H. Hall, Southern Rhodesia: Review of Commercial Conditions (London,

I 945), 45. 63 U.S. Bureau of Mines, Chromium - Commodity Profile (Washington, D.C. 1983),

1-3.



398 RAYMOND DUMETT

800 -

Total Africa

600 -

c CD

0

-c ; 400

200 .-

C. - , South Af rica

0 t 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

Fig. 4. Chromite production, I930-50.

were those of the Selukwe district, near the southern end of the Dyke System, where three mines were already producing at the start of the Second World War. But only a small portion of Rhodesian chromite was then smelted locally, and the bulk of the ore had to be shipped to England and the U.S.A. for treatment. From I935 to I942 Rhodesian production tripled in volume, with the sharpest increases between I935-7 and again in 1940-2 (see Fig. 4). As with most other African strategic metals discussed here, exports of Rhodesia chrome subsided, after reaching a peak in I942 of 348,3I4 metric tons, owing to the fulfillment of war contracts and the build-up of reserves by British and American industry. Production slackened off immediately after the war but gathered new force in the late 1940S and early 1950S in the wake of a new world-wide domestic demand for stainless steel products. One other metal produced from Southern Rhodesian ores was tungsten, which like vanadium was in great demand as a steel alloy for use in high-speed cutting tools: output of tungsten concentrate rose from 275 tons in I937 to a peak of 8o6 tons in I943.

Space has not permitted a thorough discussion of Africa's role in the extraction of non-metallic minerals other than diamonds. That exports of most of the so-called minor minerals were small in bulk should not obscure their pervasive use in military equipment. Among such minerals were mica




(principally from the Union of South Africa and Madagascar), corundum (South Africa), diatomite (Algeria), graphite (South Africa, South West Africa and Mozambique), gypsum (Egypt), sodium compounds (Tunisia, Algeria), fluorspar (South Africa, Tunisia), and talc and soapstone (South Africa, Egypt). Their uses ranged from radar, sonar, grinding tools, heat resistant aircraft parts and oxygen masks to bomb sights.

Asbestos had an almost unlimited range of wartime and domestic uses, including fireproof insulation for cables and wiring, friction materials such as packings and gaskets for vehicles and machinery, special asbestos cement and other building materials, plus fire-resistant fabrics for military and naval personnel. While the bulk of U.S. and British needs for short fibre asbestos came from Canada, a substantial percentage of the longer grades required for woven textiles had to be imported from Africa. Thus Southern Rhodesia became the third largest producer of asbestos in the world after Canada and the U.S.S.R. Production had begun in I908 but did not exhibit great vitality until the I920S. Ultimately, Rhodesian asbestos proved to be of such high quality that even its shorter fibres, formerly discarded, were used for woven fabrics during the war. Even so, production adhered to moderate levels from I938 to I946, reaching a peak of 56,546 metric tons in I942.64 The bulk of production was turned out by four mines in the Shabani district on the southeastern side of the Great Dyke. Production was controlled by the Rhodesian and General Asbestos Corporation, a subsidiary of Turner and Newall Ltd, of Manchester. Once again, as with many of the minerals catalogued here, the war was a vehicle for more sustained growth in later decades. The Rhodesian asbestos industry did not really take off until its revived use in insulation and asbestos cement for housebuilding in Europe and North America after the war.

Finally, Southern Rhodesia was almost alone on the African continent, except for the Union of South Africa and Nigeria, in being a major producer of coal. The coal discovered at Wankie (now Hwange) in the north-west corner of the country in I903, proved to be solid grade coking coal. Later other deposits of lower quality were opened up at Entube in the same region and at Sabi and Bubye in the southeast. Wankie collieries, the largest in Africa, which controlled deposits estimated at 700,000,000 tons, supplied the coal needs of the Belgian Congo, the two Rhodesias, Mozambique and Bechuanaland during the Second World War, when their sales rose to over ?C700,000 per year.65 Total Rhodesian production of bituminous coal and lignite increased by 73 per cent during the war, reaching a peak of i,8o8,ooo metric tons in I944. This was a rehearsal for sustained increases in the postwar period based on the resurgence of demand for fuel from the Copperbelt, and these increases involved the take-over of Wankie by the Anglo American Corporation in 1953.

The heavy wartime demand for minerals acted as a greater stimulus for general economic development in Southern Rhodesia than in Northern Rhodesia. The relative importance of gold to overall mineral production declined from over 6o per cent before the war to about 54 per cent of total

64 M. J. Messel, 'Recent trends in asbestos mining and mining practice', Rhodesian Mining Journal (July I 949), 22I. Minerals Yearbook for 1944, I434-9.

65 W. V. Brelsford (ed.), Handbook to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Salisbury, I947), 455.



400 RAYMOND DUMETT

production in 1948.66 Moreover, commercial agriculture was better developed and the wage earning population was less concentrated than in Northern Rhodesia along a central line of rail; tobacco exports rose dr, rnlatically during the war.67 Apart from boosting employment in the r1"-ome and asbestos industries, the war effort prompted heavy British government investment in military installations such as airfields, and training programmes.68 This in turn stimulated the building industries and consumer spending in many sectors of the domestic market. Meanwhile cutbacks on imports of foreign merchandise invigorated local manufacturing industries, especially in food processing and textiles. The expansion of internal markets was reinforced by new European immigration and a vast increase in the number of Africans in wage employment.69 An expanding trade with both Northern Rhodesia and South Africa was another feature of the boom. Yet government reports which showed that average per capita real incomes had risen greatly were vitiated by the disparity between the European managerial classes and African wage earners; and rural Africans living outside the capitalist commercial system were not included in the official statistics.

V

Capitalist mining enterprise also expanded during the Second World War in British West Africa, in the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. For nearly five centuries of trade with western Europe the Gold Coast had been known primarily for its gold mines, but during the I93os, as a result of recent discoveries, manganese, industrial diamonds, and bauxite began to rival gold in importance. Prospecting for manganese began at Nsuta, just two miles south of Tarkwa, in I 9 I 4. A syndicate called the African Manganese Company acquired the Dagwin-Nsuta line of reefs which proved to be extremely rich, yielding an ore of 30-40 per cent pure manganese. Mining by the open pit method proved to be fairly cheap and effective owing to the accessibility of the ore. Exports rose rapidly from about 30,000 tons in I9I8

to 420,000 by I930. Fortunately, recovery from the great depression came quickly, and during the mid-I930s the Gold Coast became the third largest manganese producing country in the world, ranking after the U.S.S.R. and India. 70

Because manganese is an absolutely essential alloy (there is no known substitute) for toughening steel, absence of substantial domestic deposits threatened to be a great source of weakness for Britain and the U.S. as well as for Nazi Germany.7" With the decline in shipments from the Soviet Union

66 'Significant change in the known position of the mined resources of Southern Rhodesia during the past 20 years', Rhodesian Mining Journal (August, I949), 263-7.

67 Hall, Southern Rhodesia: Review of Commercial Conditions, 7, Io. 68 Kenneth P. Vickery, 'Wars and rumours of wars: Southern Rhodesian Africans and

the Second World War', paper presented to the Conference on African and the Second World War, SOAS, London, 24-5 May, I984.

69 Giovanni Arrighi, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague, I967), 41. 70 N. R. Junner, The Geology and Mineral Resources of the Gold Coast (London, I938),

8; Kwamina B. Dickson, A Historical Geography of Ghana (Cambridge, I969), I92-3. 71 One explanation for the direction of certain German panzer thrusts in the East was

the desire to control Russian manganese supplies. Neither the U.S., Britain nor Canada produced significant quantities of the metal and so pulled out all the stops to import what they could from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.




2000

1500 -

Total Africa

c CD

0 -C

cn 1000 c 0

0 500

NA I'South Africa

//French Morocco

0~ 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950

Fig 5. Manganese production, I930-50

and Cuba at the onset of war, the Allies turned to other producing countries in the southern hemisphere: India, Brazil, South Africa and the Gold Coast.72 During the mid- I930s, until the outbreak of war, the Union of South Africa was the most important manganese producer in the continent. (South African manganese played an important part in German rearmament up until I939.)

But in I943-4 South African exports fell off markedly, while those of the Gold Coast (which became one of the Allies' foremost suppliers)73 increased fairly steadily throughout the war. During the middle and late 'forties, as manganese shipments from the U.S.S.R., India, Brazil and Cuba resumed, the Gold Coast slipped to sixth position among leading exporters (see Fig. 5). Overall between I939 and I946, Gold Coast production increased by ioo per cent before levelling off. Once again Cold War demands figured in a revival, and by I950 it was back in the number three world position.

The bauxite industry in the Gold Coast owed its emergence almost entirely to the Second World War. The first bauxite deposits had been detected at about the same time as those for manganese by the Gold Coast geological survey. The largest operations by European companies were those at Yenahin near Bekwai in Sefwi, at Mt Ejuanema near Mpraeso in Kwahu and at Kyebi in Akyem. The last of these sites existed scarcely two miles from the Accra

72 Hurstfield, 344- 73 Minerals Yearbook for 1940, 580; andfor 1944, 59I.



402 RAYMOND DUMETT

to Kumasi railway that had been built primarily to serve the cocoa industry. Still, large-scale production and export of bauxite was slow to get underway in the I930s, owing to a lack of local refining capacity and low government enthusiasm for a poor grade ore. 74 The rise of the local industry was the direct result of the urgent call of the British aircraft industry for more aluminium in I942-3. Methods of production were similar to those for manganese. Large terraces were cut into the ore-containing hillsides by giant diesel shovels; then the ore was ripped out by explosives and taken by rail to the port of Sekondi-Takoradi for loading on ships. But there was no local smelting and refining capacity until the completion of the Volta Dam project by the Ghana government in the late i960s. Wartime production rose from I4,886 metric tons in I94I to I48,547 metric tons worth L468,ooo in I945.75 However, high mining costs and a long rail haul to port made Gold Coast bauxite seem less attractive than that from the northeast coast of South America which remained Britains's prime supplier during the war.76 During the middle years of the war, the Gold Coast rose to approximately ninth among world producers, which included the U.S.A. (over 6 million metric tons), British Guiana, and Surinam as leaders.

These same external pressures also played a part in the resurgence of Nigerian tin mining. Although Nigeria ranked fourth among the mineral producers of British Africa in the I930S and I940s, its economy was not so dependent on mineral exports as were the Gold Coast or the two Rhodesias. In I944 when Nigeria's exports soared to ?I9,25I,836 in value, tin comprised about 20 per cent of the total. Tin mining in Nigeria was dominated by the Amalgamated Tin Mines of Nigeria, Ltd (ATMN), which was the result of a merger by several earlier firms. The industry had been transformed in the I920S by mechanization (in the form of dredges, steam shovels, and electric gravel pumps) along with the application of coal and petroleum power. Thus tin production rose from 6,9I0 tons in I9I5 to I5,335 in I92977 - only to tumble to 5,990 tons valued at L549,283 during the Depression. In the I930s the world's leading tin-mining areas were still British Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, Bolivia, Siam and China, with Nigeria in sixth position. After hitting the bottom in I933, world tin production picked up steadily from I934 onwards, attaining record breaking levels in I937. This renewed growth was due to new technology, greatly increased consumption of tin products in the United States and, significantly, the resumption of armaments programmes in Britain. Thus Nigeria and the Belgian Congo, the two leading Africa producers sharing in this boom, raised their joint output to over i i per cent of total world tin production by I 938.78

The impetus from the Second World War played a part in the growth of

J4 Junner, Geology and Mineral Resources of the Gold Coast, Io.

75 A. R. Starck, British West Africa: Economic and Commercial Conditions (London, 1949), 21.

76 In fact, much of the aircraft aluminium which Britain desperately needed came from bauxite produced in Latin America, processed in the U.S.A. and transhipped to the U.K. (Economist, 22 Mar. 1941, 389).

77 These figures are expressed in tons of ore concentrate containing approximately 72-5

per cent of tin metal. Nigeria Blue Books. These figures are also reproduced in full in Bill Freund, Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines (New York 1981), 202.

78 Minerals Yearbook for I938, 6io, 617, 6I9-20.




the African tin industry. With their most important supplies cut off by the Japanese conquest of Malaya and Indonesia in I942,79 the Allies turned to Bolivia, the Belgian Congo and Nigeria as their sole remaining major sources. At the outset of the war the British imperial government attempted to orchestrate the development of the Nigerian industry; and the Ministry of Supply urged the Nigerian tin-producing companies to make an all-out effort to step up production regardless of rising costs and diminished profits.80 (It is interesting to observe that the first forward movements in both Nigerian and Congolese production actually came as early as I 940-I before Japan had entered the war.) Nigerian tin production rose by about 4I per cent from I2,382 tons in I938 to a high of I7,463 tons in I943.81 Still, the rising share of African tin production in world totals in 1942-4 is deceptive, as it was based almost entirely on the destruction of Southeast Asian production by more than 8o per cent. While tin ranked high among Nigerian exports - along with palm products, groundnuts and cocoa - during the 1930S and 1940s, the British government was disappointed with the tin output of its West African colony and relied to a far greater extent than originally anticipated on Bolivian tin shipped through the U.S.A.82

In fact, the war checked the process of modernization in the Nigerian tin industry, and the increased output of 1938-45 was achieved largely by the expansion of the work force from 44,000 in 1939 to 8o,ooo by 1943.83 To combat initial shortages of labour the British government instituted forced labour policies in Nigeria in I 942. While the scheme enabled the ATMN to augment its work force by 107 per cent, and though some of the subsidiary companies increased their output, the statistics show that total Nigerian tin production barely increased after the programme was begun. As Freund has demonstrated, the forced labour scheme was an utter fiasco. Health, food and working conditions for the miners were miserable, while poor management of the scheme only added to the conmpanies' production costs.84 By 1944 all of the conscripted labour had returned home. Production processes were also impaired by severe water and power shortages in I 943-44.85 With the resumption of South-east Asian production, African tin exports fell back to 13-14 per cent of the world total by 1949-50. Worker discontent in the mining and railway industries during the war gave rise to a growing class consciousness, which led to industrial agitation in both the Gold Coast and Nigeria in the immediate post-war period.

With gold, diamonds and manganese together making up about 57 per cent of its 1943 exports by value, the Gold Coast was in a better position to take advantage of rising minerals prices than Nigeria, where tin and several other

"I An area which provided two-thirds of the world's tin fell to Japanese control in 1942. Yet despite their occupation of South East Asia, Japan never succeeded in restoring tin production in either Malaysia or Indonesia to anything approaching pre-war levels.

80 'The amalgamated tin mines of Nigeria', West Africa (2 Jan. 1945), 4'. 81 Another interesting offshoot of the war in Nigeria was the growth of the coal industry.

The Enugu Colliery produced a record tonnage of 668,158 tons in 1945, a significant portion of which was shipped to the Gold Coast: F. Dixey 'Nigeria- geology and mineral resources', Bulletin of the Imperial Institute XLIII, no. 4 (I945), 303, 305.

82 Economist, I5 Mar. 1941, 24; 2 Dec. 1944, 752. 83 Colonial Office, Annual Report for Nigeria I946, 41. 84 Freund, 144-50.

85 Minerals Yearbook for 1943, 752 and for I944, 739.



404 RAYMOND DUMETT

lesser minerals comprised a smaller percentage of total export values.86 It is difficult to see how wartime strategic mineral exports added significantly to either growth or development in Nigeria. The number of Africans employed at the tin mines, never large, grew progressively smaller; taxes on mines, which could have financed development projects for the benefit of the colony, remained low; and the lions's share of company profits was repatriated out of the colony. Moreover the economic impact of mining was strictly regional, with tin and columbite extraction being restricted mainly to the Bauchi plateau and a limited coal extraction to the Enugu area. Against the favourable upswing in prices and annual export values for tin must be set the decline in both volumes and values for West African cocoa, groundnuts and palm products, which made up by far the greater proportion of Nigerian exports. Nigerian vegetable products never really emerged from the trough of the depression, and the entire period I 929-45 was one of economic stagnation.87In the Gold Coast, by contrast, wartime mineral production - gold, manganese, industrial diamonds and bauxite - was carried out in several districts, including Sefwhi, Wassa, Asante and Akyem; and rising returns from the larger mineral exports offset the wartime slump in forest and agricultural exports.88

VI

This article has attempted to explore three major questions. What was the impact of the Second World War and pre-war rearmament programmes on the extraction and export of metallic and non-metallic minerals from Africa? How important was the part played by Africa's strategic minerals in the Allied war effort? And what was the impact of accelerated mineral production on the internal economies of major African producing countries? Although Africa was notably deficient in a number of the most important base minerals, in particular iron, petroleum, coal, lead, zinc and several of the ferro-alloys, the article has argued that Africa's exports were indispensable for the ultimate Allied victory. One incontrovertible fact was Africa's absolute dominance in the production of industrial diamonds, for which there was at this time no available substitute and which were an essential element in virtually every kind of wartime manufacturing involving iron and steel. In addition the long research that resulted in the manufacture of the atomic bomb could not have been completed without uranium supplies from the Belgian Congo. Cobalt and gold, for which Africa was the dominant world producer, also played substantial parts in the Allied war effort.

Because of their crucial importance in the creation of new materials capable of withstanding high speeds, high temperatures, and great stress, the ferro-alloys took on a lustre they had never held before the war. And while alternative sources were available, Britain and the U.S. would have found difficulty in obtaining adequate quantities of chrome, manganese, vanadium, platinum (and copper) without shipments from South Africa, the Belgian

86 Statistics in Geoffrey B. Kay, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana, I900-I960 (Cambridge, I972), 325-6, 334-5.

87 G. K. Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood, Illinois, i966), 24-5.

88 A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 266-9.



AFRICA'S STRATEGIC MINERALS 405

Congo and the Rhodesias. Colonial and quasi-colonial connexions were of considerable importance to Africa's contribution to the war effort. By direct edicts from Whitehall (as was the case for Northern Rhodesia and other British colonies) or by special government agreement-, (as existed between both the U.S. and British governments with the Belgian Congo), the Allies could be assured of a far more direct response to their orders (often at set prices) than if they had been dealing with independent countries.

It is important not to exaggerate the role of Africa's strategic minerals in the Second World War (see Appendix, 'rables 2 and 3). The continent was clearly dominant in only four - industrial diamonds, where Africa averaged about 96-8 per cent of the world total; cobalt, where Africa produced about 88-92 per cent during the war years; uranium, where small quantities played a decisive role; and gold, where Africa made up 50 per cent of world production in I943. The U.S.A. was clearly the most powerful mineral- producing nation, and North America the leading mineral-producing continent, throughout the war. Nor should we forget the uneven distribution and production of minerals across Africa; it has been estimated that at least half the continent produced no minerals of any consequence apart from traditional salt and surface gold.

At the same time, Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate that there were at least nine other strategic minerals where African exports made up a substantial part of the world total. In several, African countries ranked among the world's leading suppliers; in others the continent was an important secondary producer. Major exports were asbestos, 27 per cent of the world's total in I943; chrome ore, 38 per cent; copper, i6 per cent; manganese, I9 per cent; platinum, I 3 per cent; tin, 22 per cent; and vanadium, 24 per cent. The crucial point here is that new and heavy wartime demands, coupled with shortages in other parts of the world, called previously untouched and marginal producing areas in Africa into play. Furthermore, the mere listing of African metallic and non-metallic minerals production as percentages of world totals does not tell the full story. There were numerous other instances where the African contribution to war supplies of a particular element, even though relatively small, was considered vital to the Allied aggregate. Key examples were bauxite (I-2 per cent of the world total in I943 and rising to 3-3 by I950),

silver (3 per cent), tungsten (3-42 per cent), plus a host of the non-metallic minerals: mica, (where the African contribution was 3 per cent), beryllium (2 per cent); and graphite (6 per cent). Finally any simple listing of the top three national producers in major categories is apt to be misleading. If we count the top six world producers of each mineral for the year I943 (North America, 3I places; Europe, 3I; Africa, 31; Asia, i9; South America, io), we see that Africa held its own with most of the other continents.

A number of African mineral-producing territories did achieve a measure of economic growth during the war. Yet, it is a commonplace that 'growth' and 'economic development' (which involves structural change) are not identical. And for those areas, such as the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, where general development did take place, it is necessary to remember that complex long term changes conducive to diversification had been set in motion before the war. These included relatively independent political systems, an expanding population, growth of domestic markets for manufactured goods, factor mobility and expansion of commercial agricul-



406 RAYMOND DUMETT

ture. In other colonial possessions surveyed here, such as the Belgian Congo, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, wartime mining operations aggravated enclave-type development. Mining industries normally produce weak linkages within a nation's economy, even when that economy is commercialized. And the percentage of a nation's total work force employed in mining is typically small. In most of the countries studied, patterns of economic dualism were reinforced by seasonal migration of workers in and out of the mining areas, by limited government expenditure on improvements outside the mining sector, and by a heavy repatriation of mining profits and taxation. In many instances, it was not until after the war that colonial taxes on mines were used to any great extent to promote welfare projects for the benefit of Africans. There is little doubt that wartime mining activities promoted the expansion of industrial capitalism in parts of Africa, but the full story of the war's impact will not be known until the history of agricultural, as well as mineral production, is examined for many different countries and districts.

Just as the Second World War allowed for the more rapid penetration of parts of Africa by expatriate corporations, so too the patterns of supply established in wartime increased the dependency of the West on Africa as a primary supplier of strategic metals for industrial production. Indeed the U.S.A. became increasingly reliant on foreign supplies of a number of minerals (for example, copper, lead, zinc) in which it had been self-sufficient or nearly self-sufficient before. In a host of other minerals (asbestos, aluminium, chrome, cobalt, industrial diamonds, manganese, strontium, nickel, tin, plus antimony, corundum, berylium, mercury, and mica), the United States remained dependent by 85 per cent or more of its consumption on foreign (including African) resources. The North American and Western European involvement in African strategic mineral exploitation which began with the Second World War was no brief affair, for there was an even greater penetration during the years of the Cold War. With the movement towards jet engines, nuclear arsenals, rocketry, satellites and electronic guidance systems, the dependence of the industrial powers on African minerals was further intensified.

SUMMARY

Unprecedented wartime demands by Britain and the U.S.A for strategic minerals from abroad, coupled with the loss of valuable sources of supply in Eastern Europe and South East Asia to the Axis, greatly enlarged the volume of production and the pace of economic change in the mineral-rich zones of Africa. But the sharpest upsurge in output, which helped rescue a number of African export economies from the slough of depression, coincided with British rearmament several years before the war broke out; and production in most instances reached a crest two or three years before the war ended. In one sense the mineral regions of Africa between 1937

and 1945 provided a supreme example of the old mercantilist credo that colonies existed primarily to buttress the economies of the metropole in time of war. From another perspective, the war strengthened the hold of powerful multinational corporations on African mineral development and accelerated the absorption of new mining areas and labour supplies into the world capitalist system. A wide range of African metallic and non-metallic ores played a vital - and in some cases an indispensable - role in the Allied victory in 1945. But for the African peoples and countries most directly involved, the wartime upsurge had an uneven impact. Wage increases were in no way commensurate with the increased workloads nor with the pay scales for European miners. Except in the Union of South Africa and Southern




Rhodesia, where greater agricultural and industrial diversification was already in train, the expansion of the mining industries perpetuated enclave development. The reliance of the industrialized West on African strategic minerals during the war was a prelude to the even greater production boom and dependency of the Cold War period.

APPENDIX

Table I. Percentages of 1938 world output of strategic minerals produced by major powers

British Empire U.S.A. U.S.S.R. Germany

Metal ores Bauxite (crude ore) I75. 7 6-i 2.3

Chrome ore (metal content) 37-6 3.6 I7.3 Copper ore (metal content) 29-8 25.I 4.8 I.5 Iron ore (metal content) I2-9 I7.8 I9-5 6-I Lead ore (metal content) 35-9 i8-7 3-9 5.6 Manganese ore (metal content) 36.i o-8 4I.3 8.3 Mercury - I I-9 5-2 I-9

Molybdenum ore (metal content) 0-2 92.4

Nickel ore 87-9 0-4 2.3

Tin ore (metal content) 39.2 - 0-2

Tungsten ore (metal content) 25.2 7.8 Vanadium ore (metal content 34.8 27.3

Zinc ore (metal content) 29-0 25-I 3-7 I I9

Fuels and chemicals Coal 24-8 29-0 I0-9 i 6-6 Petroleum 2.4 60.3 i o-6 0-2 Phosphates 9 I 26-8 I 5-8

Potash o I 9-6 4-I 62-2 Pyrites 8-9 5-4 4.2

Table 2. Percentage of African mineral production to total world production during specific years

Minerals I935 1938 I943 I950

Asbestos I 6 I 6 27 I4.4 Bauxite - I-23 3-3 Chrome 25 3 1 38-2 35 Copper I 5 i 8 i 6 2 I Cobalt n.a. 94 88 9 I Diamonds 99 99 96 98 Gold 43 40 50'4 43 Iron ore 3 4 0-9 3 Lead ore 2 I-3 0-2 6 Manganese ore I6 22 I9 I4.3



408 RAYMOND DUMETT

Table 2. (cont.)

Minerals I935 I938 I 943 1950

Molybdenum I 1-4 0o02 073 Nickel o026 o-2 0o23 o 58 Petroleum o0o7 o-o8 0o36 0 43 Phosphate 50 44.2 I3 31 Platinum 13 9-2 I 2-8 26 Silver 2-3 2'I 3 4 Tin I I 9 3 22 14 Tungsten 0o54 2 4 2

Vanadium 35 24 23

Zinc I157 2 o?74 n.a.

Table 3. Leading world suppliers of major minerals by country in I943

Mineral Producing countries by rank order (top six only)

(I) Gold South Africa, U.S.S.R., Canada, U.S.A., S. Rhodesia, Gold Coast

(2) Asbestos Canada, S. Rhodesia, South Africa, China, Swaziland, Korea

(3) Bauxite U.S.A., British Guiana, Surinam, Hungary, France, Italy (4) Chromium Cuba, S. Rhodesia, U.S.S.R., S. Africa, U.S.A.,

Yugoslavia (5) Coal U.S.A., Germany, United Kingdom, U.S.S.R., Poland, China (6) Cobalt Belgian Congo, N. Rhodesia, French Morocco (7) Copper U.S.A., Chile, N. Rhodesia, Canada, Belgian Congo,

U.S.S.R. (8) Diamonds Belgian Congo, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Angola,

S. Africa, Brazil (g) Iron ore U.S.A., France, U.S.S.R., Sweden, Germany, China

(io) Lead U.S.A., Mexico, Australia, Canada, Germany, U.S.S.R. (i i) Manganese U.S.S.R., India, Gold Coast, Japan, Cuba, Brazil (I2) Mercury Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Canada, Japan (I3) Molybdenum U.S.A., Mexico, Chile, China, South Korea, Norway (14) Nickel Canada, Finland, New Caledonia, Indonesia, Germany,

Norway (I 5) Petroleum U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Venezuela, Indonesia, Iran,

Rumania (i6) Phosphate U.S.A., U.S.S.R., French Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt,

Japan ( 7) Platinum Canada, U.S.S.R., S. Africa, Colombia, U.S.A.,

Ethiopia (i8) Tin Bolivia, Malaya, Belgian Congo, Indonesia, Nigeria, China (I9) Titanium U.S.A., Norway, Canada, India, Australia, Senegal (20) Tungsten U.S.A., China, Norway, Korea, Bolivia, Portugal (2I) Uranium Belgian Congo, Canada, South Africa (22) Vanadium U.S.A., Peru, Southwest Africa, N. Rhodesia (23) Zinc U.S.A., Germany, Canada, Japan, Mexico, U.K.



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