THE BRITISH EAST AFRICAN TERRITORIES
AND THEIR STRATEGICAL IMPLICATIONS

The territories under the British Flag in Eastern Africa, not actually in the active war zone, are now at any rate on the fringe of it, as you know from the daily mentions in the war news of places the names of which 4re unfamiliar to most of us. As I have known these countries pretty intimately for more than thirty years, including the northern frontier of Kenya which divides British from Italian territory, and is the scene of some air and land warfare to-day, perhaps I can help you to appreciate what is going on locally and also what are the wider strategical implications of events there.

What are these territories, and who inhabits them?

Firstly, the one nearest to the enemy is the Kenya Colony. She has a sea frontage to the Indian Ocean of only about two hundred miles, but this includes Mombasa, the port of which, known as Kilindini) has by far the finest harbour anywhere on the east coast of Africa from the Red Sea to Delagoa Bay. Mombasa, which is just south of the Equator, is the terminus of the Kenya‑Uganda Railway, which traverses the whole width of Kenya from south‑east to north‑west, linking the coast with the great inland sea, Lake Victoria, a distance of about five hundred miles from the port, and the railway then extends round the north of that Lake to Kampala, the capital of the entirely land‑locked inland state, the Uganda Protectorate.

This railway traverses what are known as the Highlands of Kenya, and for about two‑thirds of its length where it passes through country climatically suitable for Europeans, a wide belt both north of the railway and south has been fairly closely settled by a permanent population of some thousands of farmers and planters, mainly British men of the highest quality ever produced by our pioneer race. Many of them are ex‑Service officers of the last war and the sons of such men. There are also several hundreds of sturdy South African Dutch farmers who are settled mainly at the north‑west corner of the Colony, and who are no whit behind their British fellow colonists in their love of their adopted country and their devotion to the Empire. If any of them are listening to this broadcast, I would like to wish them good luck and remind them of the old Transvaal motto: "Eendracht maakt macht," "Unity is Strength."

Kenya for many years has voluntarily adopted compulsory liability for military service in the Local Defence Forces, and a system of annual training for all British men between the ages of eighteen and fifty‑five, and I think it has been stated in the newspapers that they have now been called up. They will very certainly give a good account of themselves when occasion arises. Next, I should mention the thirty thousand to forty thousand British Indians in the Colony, mainly artisans, traders and clerks, whose loyalty is unquestionable, and many of whom, I believe, have offered their services. Last, but by no means least, the three and a half million Africans of Kenya, which include several large tribes, all united in their desire to fight the enemies of him whom they call " Kingie Georgie ". Many of them have not forgotten seeing with their own eyes our Gracious King and Queen, when as Duke and Duchess of York, their Majesties spent some happy months in Kenya at their camp at Isiolo.

Outside these categories, because technically the subjects of our good ally, His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar, there is a small but notable element of Arab stock resident in the Coast belt as well as those in the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba.  These are Mahometan. Those on the mainland, the Kenya coast, are finely led by the Sheikh Colonel The Hon. Sir Ali bin Salim, K.C.M.G., the Lewali of Mombasa, to whom I and his other many old friends now in England would wish to send our greetings ‑ "Salaam, Sir Ali". To His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar may we send this greeting: "Salaam alaikum ya Sultan, Allah yabarak feek"; "Greetings, Sultan, God give you peace and his blessings upon you."

For obvious reasons, even if I knew, I could not discuss the military and other forces of Kenya and the other East African territories, but it has long been public knowledge that the R.A.F. established an important air base there during the recent Governorship of Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, and that hundreds of keen young British settlers have trained as pilots of the highest quality. There is no more air‑minded country in the world than Kenya, and, indeed, all British East Africa.

Not only does the Imperial Air Route, linking England with South Africa, traverse Kenya, but there is a most extensive system of local Air Lines linking all parts of the country together, and not a few settlers have aeroplanes of their own. Added to this, as we now know from the published news, both the South African and the Rhodesian Air Forces have sent squadrons to reinforce British air power in Kenya, and the recent highly successful operations of the South African squadrons operating against the Italians on the northern frontier of Kenya, have " thrilled us all ", to quote the words of the Secretary of State for Air in his recent cable to General Smuts.

I will not go into so much detail about the other British East African dependencies‑Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. They are more remote from the present fighting and have no enemy frontier.

To the north of Uganda lies the AngloEgyptian Sudan, and on the west Uganda marches with another ally, the Belgian Congo. The Congo also forms the western boundary of Tanganyika to as far south as where Tanganyika joins the British territories of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. On the east Tanganyika has 6oo miles of coast frontage to the Indian Ocean, including the port of Dar-es-Salaam, the terminus of the railway linking that port right up to Lake Tanganyika about 700 miles from the sea, and there is a branch line from that main line to Lake Victoria. These railways provide a line of communication to the Congo, and an alternative route to Uganda and the interior of Kenya via Lake Victoria, should any mishap befall the railway from Mombasa to the interior. The three million Africans of Uganda and the four and a half millions of Tanganyika are loyal to a man. The British white population are smaller than in Kenya, but of the same quality. Germans and Italians have all been interned without trouble.

Now, as to the strategic importance of these countries, and a word about the northern frontier of Kenya. Nairobi, in the centre of Kenya, is not only the capital of that Colony, but is the commercial and, as I think, the strategical, centre of this entire group of about half a million square miles, with its eleven or twelve millions population. I have mentioned that the Imperial Air Route goes through Nairobi to the Rhodesias and the Union of South Africa, and have mentioned the two railways from Mombasa and Dar-es-Salaarn respectively, which link the ocean with the interior of half the African Continent. Lake Victoria is not only a great inland sea. It is the source of the White Nile, on which depends the life and prosperity of the Sudan and Egypt. The northern frontier of Kenya is thus the outpost protecting practically the whole of East, Central and South Africa, that is to say, from about the Equator right down to the Cape of Good Hope.

This frontier makes a curious dog leg. Starting from a point on the Indian Ocean, about 140 miles north of Mombasa, it takes a straight line almost due north through practically desert country for about 250 miles, till it strikes the Juba River., between two places called Lugh and Dolo. The frontier then closely follows to westward the line of that river., and this river here forms the southern boundary of Italian Abyssinia, and the frontier then joins the southeast comer of the Sudan near Lake Rudolph. The first 250mile north and south section runs through sandy desert and scrub country, with practically no water, and it would seem that the Italian actual military frontier is a line of posts on the Juba River itself, from the little port of Kismayu‑quite useless, by the way, for ocean ships - up to where the frontier turns west near Lugh. This explains, no doubt, why the names of Italian posts raided by the South African Air Force and R.A.F. have been concerned with such places as Kismayu, Gobwen, Bardera and Serenli, which are all on the river, 4o or 50 miles inside Italian Somaliland.

These were for many years our own frontier posts for defence against the Somalis, when the Italians, who nominally controlled the east side of the Juba, were too weak to restrain the Somali cattle raiders. I remember the very efficient little Camel Corps we used to keep at Gobwen, a few miles up the river from Kismayu, and how often it used to be called upon to help the Italians in their difficulties. But, after the last war, to satisfy the Italian desire for expansion, we ceded to them the port of Kismayu and the 250. miles of river, and some thousands of square miles, which gave them 200 or 300 miles more sea frontage.

Well, from near Lugh, as I have said, the Northern Kenya frontier runs west to Lake Rudolph. On the north side is Italian Abyssinia, and on the south the Northern Province of Kenya, known as the Boran. Both the Italians and ourselves have posts along the river, the chief, perhaps, being Moyale, where the river cuts the village in two‑Italian Moyale on the north bank, British Moyale on the south.

So close and friendly have the relations been that we read that the British District Commissioner was dining with his opposite number across the river the night before war was declared, and was taken prisoner, apparently on Italian territory, before Mussolini declared war.

The frontier is backed, on the Kenya side, by a stretch of sandy desert and scrub varying from 150 to 250 miles wide southwards to where the fertile line begins of the Kenya Highlands. To be lost in that country without water means death. The African population is scanty and nomadic.

Finally, to the west it runs into an old and quite impassable lava field and the long barrier of Lake Rudolph, the water of which is unfit for man or beast. So that is the frontier, the outpost, as I have said, of the whole of East, Central and South Africa, and I have tried to describe to you the people to the south of it, who are pledged to defend it, and what are the strategical interests they are defending.