The Cape to Cairo Railway, which was the late Mr. Rhodes's scheme for joining the south and north of Africa, a distance of nearly 5,000 miles, is making rapid progress. Northwards from the Cape the line has been carried forward by the Chartered Company to the Wankie coal-fields, which are 200 miles north of Buluwayo (or 1,560 miles north from the sea), and some 70 miles south of the Victoria Falls. At the present rate of progress it is expected that the railway will reach the Victoria Falls about April, 1905. In the north the railway only runs as far as Khartoum, and in spite of the agreement with Abyssinia permitting the making of a line through its territory, no extension south is likely in the present generation.

Mr. Rhodes's idea was to fit the main lines with branches to the coast; there will be many of these in time. Two are finished, the Uganda Railway (British) and the Beira-Salisbury line (Portuguese); others are planned, such as the Congo-Katanga Railway (Belgian) to Rhodesia and one through German East Africa. The Cape to Cairo telegraph is rapidly approaching completion; it has now reached Central Africa.