of physical resources -- an advantage which many underde-
veloped territories can not claim. Southern Rhodesia's geological
structure contains valuable deposits of gold, chrome, manganese,
coal, and a host of lesser minerals. But these are far surpassed by
the wealth of Northern Rhodesia's Copperbelt which contains
one of the free world's most important copper ore reserves.

The generosity of nature has clearly permitted economic
expansion at a pace which otherwise would have been impos-
sible. But the task of harnessing this potential and transforming
it to economic advantage has confronted formidable obstacles.
The Rhodesian part of the African interior has been aptly
described as a 'landlocked island'. The areas richest in natural
wealth are situated at least four hundred miles, and often more,
from the sea. But distance is only part of the difficulty. Nature,
in its provision of terrain, has been less than kind. The relief of
the area as a whole has been likened to an 'inverted saucer'.
Plateau land begins not far from the coasts, thus ruling out
long-distance river transport to the sea. Moreover, the interior
is broken by rugged escarpments which obstruct surface trans-
portation. These barriers, which for so long preserved the isola-
tion of Central Africa, stood equally as obstacles to the expan-
sion of the money economy. That the rudiments of a transport
link with the outside world were, in fact, provided from an
early date is a tribute to the engineering and administrative
skills which European settlement supplied. But the cost was
heavy -- and has continued to be. Even so, Central Africa is
still far from being served with a transport system adequate to
meet the demands of an expanding money economy.

The impressive record of economic expansion which the
Rhodesias have compiled has been accomplished in face of
other handicaps as well. As is the case in much of the under-
developed world, most of the prerequisite facilities for highly
organized production and exchange were lacking. The African
interior which European settlers found in the 1890s was raw
and remote. The land and its peoples had scarcely been touched
by the dynamic changes in which Western Europe and North
America had been swept up. No dramatic technological ad-
vance had occurred there and its peoples had not developed the
skills which could readily fit them into Westernized modes of
economic organization. In all forms -- technical, managerial,

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