Papers of Donald Wingfield Malcolm

Diary and photographs as private secretary to Lord Hailey when the latter was Director of the African Research Survey. Correspondence, reports etc. concerning land and agriculture in Tanganyika. Account books and files relating to Dungo Farm. Also, a collection of Kenya Draft Township Development Plans drawn by Elliot Fitzgibbon, who was Municipal and Town Planning Engineer to the Kenya Government from 1928-1934.

Donald Wingfield Malcolm was born on the 12 March 1907. He was educated at Clifton College, and Trinity College, Oxford, where he took a degree in Agriculture. He entered the Tanganyikan Civil Service in 1928 and became Assistant District Officer in Mwanza in 1930. During 1934-1935 he carried out a survey of the gum industry in East Africa and the Sudan and his report, 'Gum and Gum Arabic', was published in March 1935. Later in that year he became private secretary to Sir Malcolm (later Lord) Hailey, Director of the African Research Survey, and accompanied him on his tour of Africa, south of the Sahara, during 1935 and 1936. In 1936 Malcolm was appointed to carry out a survey of land tenure in Sukumaland and he produced a report in 1938 and a further study of the subject 10 years later.

Malcolm became a District Officer in 1940, was seconded to the Colonial Office during 1943-1944, and in 1949 was appointed Principal Assistant Secretary, Tanganyika. He later served as Secretary for Agriculture and Natural Resources (1954) and Ministerial Secretary (1957-1959).

In 1951 Malcolm acquired the 99 years lease of a property on the coast near Mboamaji, 10 miles from Dar-es-Salaam. This property, called Dungo Farm, was nearly 2000 acres in extent, with a mile of beach forming the northern boundary and a permanent river running through the centre of the estate. When, in 1960, ill health forced him to return to England, Malcolm sold the farm as a going concern with 390 head of cattle, 160 hens, and plantations of cashew nuts, coconuts, coffee, elephant grass and fruit trees.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Administrative/Biographical History compiled with reference to A Biographical Dictionary of the British Colonial Service 1939-1966 by A.H.M. Kirk-Greene (1991).

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

Listed as nos. 200 and 316 in Manuscript Collections (Africana and non-Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, Supplementary accessions to the end of 1977 and Cumulative Index, compiled by Wendy S. Byrne (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1978).

No reproduction or publication of personal papers without permission. Contact the library in the first instance.