Elevation of Johannesburg - big surprise!

[Red Leg]

Economic factors certainly played the key part. Mining instigated population centers like Kimberly, Johannesburg, Ndola, Elizabethville, Mbeya. Good agricultural land instigated the settlement of areas like the white highlands of Kenya, the eastern highlands/midlands of Rhodesia, the northern and southern highlands of Tanzania.

Long term, what brought more Europeans and kept them. Economic opportunity, but also the climate. ie: There is better rain in coastal Kenya for farming yet whites did not congregate there in numbers like they did in the highlands.

My initial post was not trying dispute economic factors. I was assuming economic factors as self evident. I was just saying to look for the white population centers of British colonial Africa. Most tend to be at altitude.

Absolutely correct. The British in particular were adept at having businesses and residences both low and high. In India and parts of East Africa, families fled the coast during the wet season to avoid malaria and typhoid. I should add they were doing this long before anyone understood bacteria or the role of the mosquito. No Englishman tried to spend a moment longer in Mombasa or Bombay (yes, I know, Mumbai - but we are talking the Raj for the moment) than absolutely possible

Southern Africa is, of course, different. There the British seized the coastal economic centers and the majority of the boars moved inland. The climate is also far more temperate. German Southwest and East Africa did not come under British control until the end of WWII and never developed the more traditional colonial culture.

By the way, when on the way to Johannesburg, our planes are pressurized to 8,000 feet equivalent altitude. One reason being a stew (or a passenger) is exhausting work.