This raft is from the Lobito Bay area of Angola and is one of relatively few examples of rafts found in Africa.
It is believed to have been built about 1950, is constructed from a series of long and curved balsa wood branches/trunks, using the wood in the round, secured together with a mixture of hardwood pegs and treenails and wooden fibre lashings. The curved and upwards sides are held in place by a crude square and vertical transom. It was primarily used for fishing and carrying cargo and by its very construction would have been awash with water, on the floor of the hull, with the buoyancy coming from that of the individual poles and not from the buoyancy of the hull as a watertight whole.
