Abstract
SIR EDMUND TEALE'S important address on "The Contribution of Colonial Geological Survey to the Development of the Mineral and other Resources of East and West Africa", delivered before the Royal Society of Arts, is published in the Society's Journal of April 13, 1945, pp. 245–56. The success of the early mineral surveys, of which the first was started in Nigeria in 1903, made it clear that larger staffs and fuller facilities for the wide extension of geological work on more systematic lines would be amply justified. The first permanent Geological Survey was started on the Gold Coast in 1910, to be followed in 1918 by one in Nigeria, and later by others in Uganda, Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Sierra Leone and Kenya. Their economic activities are summarized as (a) exploratory: dealing essentially with investigations which yield results in the actual discovery of new deposits of minerals, or in mapping the geological features which assist prospectors or mining engineers to locate and open up mineral occurrences; and (b) advisory: including numerous forms of assistance regarding engineering, industrial, commercial, agricultural and welfare interests (for example, water supply, soil conservation and site locations). Much of this assistance, though it has far-reaching influence on colonial development, does not usually lend itself to statistical valuation.
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Colonial Geological Surveys of Africa. Nature 156, 167 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156167a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156167a0