Commercial Travelers

At one time, Africa--instead of what is now Israel--might have become the homeland of the Jews. When Czarist pogroms drove hundreds of thousands of Jews out of Russia before World War I, Britain's Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain drew up a grant of 5,000 sq. mi., in what is now Kenya's white highlands, to serve as a Zionist refuge until the Holy Land should be opened to them. But a Zionist commission inspecting this temporary Promised Land took fright after being nearly crushed by stampeding elephants, surrounded by Masai warriors, and rendered sleepless by roaring lions. Shuddering "No, thanks," the commissioners hastily left British East Africa to the birds, beasts and black men.

Last week the Israelis were back in force in Africa--and enjoying it. This time they were not homeless Jews but bustling commercial travelers and dispensers of technical assistance and capital. Many a newly independent African state finds its own economic development problems strikingly similar to those Israel faced only a decade ago. But British and French interests find the Israelis are now moving in as fast as they themselves move or are pushed out. Items:

P:Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, the Ghana National Construction Co.--owned 60% by the government and 40% by the Israeli Federation of Labor--has consistently underbid the onetime top contractor, British-owned Taylor Woodrow. Its latest job: a $5,000,000 international airport at Accra.

P:In Nigeria, due to become independent in October, Israel's Water Resources Development Ltd. recently joined an ambitious plan for agricultural, industrial and municipal water development and Israelis will supervise twelve plantations of 1,500 acres each, patterned on Israel's cooperative farms.

P:In Sekou Toure's Guinea, which voted itself out of the French Community a year and a half ago, Israeli diamond interests formed a partnership with the government to market the output of Guinea's diamond mines.

Fewer Strings. The Israeli penetration of Africa is primarily economic, but it has political overtones too: in busily cultivating the new African nations, Israel naturally hopes for their support in the U.N. against Arab boycotts of Israeli products and Nasser's denial of the Suez Canal to Israeli cargoes.

For their part, newly independent Africans, needing and wanting help but leery of the hand offered by the old colonial powers, suspect fewer strings to Israeli assistance. As a mixed economy itself with a flair for socialist forms, e.g., the agricultural kibbutzim, Israel is also psychologically more in tune with smaller nations who think their problems so vast and their time so short that they do not trust free enterprise alone. Besides, says one Israeli official, "we are working on the same scale as other small nations, and our shoes happen to fit them."

As many an African country can attest, it is proving a comfortable fit. When Ghana won her freedom from Britain three years ago, Israel's Zim Navigation Co. jumped in with a complete, ready-to-go merchant fleet--the Black Star Line--which saved Ghana so much in foreign exchange that the Nkrumah government recently was able to buy out Zim's 40% share. The Israelis are happy to sell out, and often wind up with a brokerage fee or a managerial contract. Liberia is employing Israeli construction firms on its new $3,500,000 Ducor Palace Hotel, which will be West Africa's finest. Ethiopia's Haile Selassie, who proudly claims some Jewish blood from a chance encounter centuries ago between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, has hired Israeli engineers to build 77 miles of mountain road, and is thinking of getting Israelis to convert his slum-ridden capital, Addis Ababa, into a modern city. Israeli technicians are employed by many African nations to staff hospitals, train military forces, and produce experimental crops.

Sticking to Business. In African countries with large Moslem populations, the Israelis had to contend at the outset with pro-Arab sympathies. Remembering that they were guests, they stuck to business and to efforts that visibly helped the people, while Nasser in his Radio Cairo broadcasts offered his Moslem brothers little but hate. As one Israeli living in the Ivory Coast puts it, they found that "people will forget a lot of politics very quickly if you can outshine the next fellow at filling a need that helps people in the pocketbook."

In Ghana, government backbenchers recently expressed fears of Israeli domination. To leave no doubt of Israel's intentions, Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir toured West Africa last month, leaving behind her this promise, in the words of Israel's Ambassador: "We are not trying to establish ourselves in Africa. There are no Jewish settlements, no synagogues. As soon as our work of assisting is completed, we will move out and move on."

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