Groundnuts In The Gambia Make Margarine For Britain: Convict labour is used to build up the embankments for rails along which run the sided tipping trucks which convey the decorticised groundnuts to the stock piles to await shipment overseas.Though the Gambia is the smallest of the British West African territories, little more than 4,000 square miles and with a population of only 200,000, it is making a very real contribution to the Allied War effort. Pubic recognition has been given to the vital part played by its airfields in the North-West African campaign, but the Gambians are fighting in Burma as members of the West African Expeditionary Force, and meanwhile, from the Gambian home front is coming maximum production of a commodity vitally important to the British people's wartime diet - groundnuts. January 01, 1944. (Photo by British Official Photograph).