African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 26: Chapter 22: Colonial Development

The Heixinggen Consortium in Tanzania’s First Town, on the southwestern low hills, has planted row upon row of agave seedlings recently buried in the soil, with agricultural workers turning the earth.

On both sides of the path, natives pull iron plows procured from Europe to turn over the soil on the paths, while Chinese are responsible for the soil around the agave seedlings. This is meticulous work; if these natives were allowed to do it, they might harm the roots of the agave, so only experienced and careful Chinese agricultural workers use hoes to gently dig the soil.

On the already completed land, Germans supervise and direct natives to dig drainage channels under the guidance of Spanish agricultural experts.

From the high slopes stretching to the flat lands are already sown wheat seedlings, and to ensure water supply for the wheat, new irrigation channels are being constructed.

With the arrival of more and more Chinese immigrants, the scale of agriculture has become quite substantial. These new immigrants are assigned by the company to senior workers who have some experience and participate in development work. The Germans are the leadership, mainly responsible for supervision, management, and military force.

To prevent some obtuse native tribes and slave-hunting teams, the stationed German hired corps would patrol in groups around the surrounding territories.

The main force continues to explore the interior, drafting maps, and sometimes during the return for rest, they would conveniently capture some labor force and clear the land around the First Town.

The entire First Town is expanding westward at a visible speed, and as long as subsequent personnel are in place, new outposts will continuously appear in Tanzania’s interior.

The entire colonization team has started planning a second outpost, located on the banks of the Little Rhine River thirteen kilometers southwest of the First Town. To facilitate statistical management, this time, the name remains plain as before, Second Town (Ruvu). In addition, a third town is also in planning.

The third town (Kitong’a) is located north of the First Town, with a straight-line distance of about ten kilometers, and construction will start once personnel are complete.

A prototype of an East African colony based around the First Town, connecting eastward to Dar es Salaam port and radiating expansion to the west, has emerged, with an approximate area of 150,000 acres.

Agave prefers hot and humid high slope environments with uniform rainfall, especially ideal is a climate with high day temperatures, dry conditions, full sunlight, and foggy nights.

East Africa happens to meet the above conditions, with strong sunshine and high temperatures during the day, and at night, due to high plateau terrain, the atmosphere is relatively thin, insulation is poor, heat dissipates quickly, moisture in the air easily condenses. Therefore, Africa’s daily temperature range is greater than the annual range.

The suitable growth temperature for agave is 27-30℃, with an upper limit of 40℃ and a lower limit of 16℃. The daily temperature range should not exceed 7~10℃, which matches East Africa’s temperature conditions.

The suitable annual rainfall is 1200-800mm. It has strong adaptability, is drought-resistant but fears flooding, yet has strong growth ability and wide adaptation range, making it suitable to be planted in loose, well-drained, low water table and fertile sandy loam soil. Poorly drained and frequently wet places are unsuitable for planting. It has low cold resistance and is prone to physiological leaf spot disease.

These are data provided by Spanish agricultural experts invited by Ens from Mexico. Agave originally comes from the Mexican plateau and was later brought worldwide by Europeans.

This Spanish expert was a farmer engaged in agave planting in Mexico. Although his educational level is not high, his grandmother came from the German region, so he also speaks German, which is why he was hired by the East African colony.

The Mexican plateau is similar to the East African plateau; both are near the equator, with somewhat similar environments. The difference is that East Africa is closer to the equator, which cuts through the middle, while Mexico is between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator.

Mexico has uneven distribution of rainfall, with some areas being tropical rainforest and others tropical desert, whereas East Africa’s conditions are better, with Ethiopia and south of Somali mostly being tropical grasslands.

The East African colony adopts corporate management, and the Chinese who immigrate here are nominally workers of the Heixinggen Consortium, and in practice as well. The land belongs to the Heixinggen Consortium, which also arranges collective labor for these agricultural workers.

All immigrants are divided into different work groups to systematically develop East African land, with the food supply ultimately determined by the efficiency of each group’s work.

The colony’s management will send people to inspect the agricultural workers’ accomplishments, with inspection standards including workload and time, quality of farmland development, and subsequent crop growth conditions.

Theoretically, these agricultural workers can earn wages, but so far no one has received any. Chinese agricultural workers do not mind; the main purpose of coming here to work is to make a living. In the Far East, most lost their land or went bankrupt due to irresistible forces, and had no way to survive, thus crossing the sea to East Africa.

The East African colony encourages such people to seek livelihood here because what is most lacking now is people. After using Chinese and natives for comparison, colony leaders also found that Chinese workers are far more efficient than natives and easier to manage.

Most of the natives need team members to stand beside with whips to supervise them into working lazily, influenced by the exploitation of the Heixinggen Consortium.

Everything fears comparison. On one side, the Chinese labor hard without complaints, obey arrangements, do as instructed without any reluctance, yet why can’t you local slackers do the same?

So, the colony leadership gradually ”understands” the boss’s efforts. These Chinese are indeed born quality workers, not inferior to Germans.

However, these Chinese workers do indeed have a large appetite. Germans, who can barely get by in Europe, find it hard to understand the Chinese’s yearning for a full meal.

And in the East African colony, the more work done, the more food can be eaten, naturally leading to hard work.

Due to the colonial development, the large animals on the East African grasslands suffered greatly. Wildebeest, lions... all large creatures were hunted by the colonizing team.

Most of the meat from these animals ended up in the stomachs of Chinese laborers, who after years of not tasting meat, felt as though it was the New Year.

In fact, during this era, many of the lower-class people in Qing Country couldn’t see a drop of oil or even hint of meat during New Year, unlike now, as long as they work well, they can earn a living and occasionally eat meat. Although the daily work is very hard, happiness and satisfaction appear on these people’s faces for the first time.

With basic survival issues resolved, some families have started the task of childbirth. That’s right, there are Chinese families in the East African colony.

The East African colony encourages family immigration, since forming families is essential for maintaining stable governance. Of course, large families and clans are excluded. In Ens’s view, large families and clans are unstable factors because backing a large family or clan would result in unity and rebellion isn’t just a game, and it’s also unfair for social development.

So Ens strictly prohibited large families and clans from interfering when recruiting people in the Far East, although these families and clans might not consider coming to East Africa, Ens still needed to take precautions.

As for small families with a couple or three members, Ens welcomes them vigorously. Not to mention other benefits, anyone forming a family or already settled in the East African colony will be allocated a separate residence, while bachelors mostly can only live in dormitories.

Currently, the colony’s male-to-female ratio is severely imbalanced, with few family formations, mostly already formed in the Far East, and individual recruitment of female workers even rarer.

The future resolution of these bachelors’ marriage issues falls on Ens’s shoulders. However, at the moment, Ens does not have the energy to handle these matters.

Ens is currently more concerned with industrial development and the changing situation in Europe.