African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 86: Chapter 82 Flour Mill

June.

Bajamojo Port, on the banks of the Little Rhine.

Bajamojo, as the fourth largest port in East African colonies after Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, and Tanga, is also a focal point for colonial development in East Africa.

A factory building spanning over a thousand square meters has risen at Bajamojo Port, constructed entirely of brick and concrete, with its red walls clashing with the surrounding white Arab architecture.

The style is a direct copy of contemporary European architecture, forming a stark contrast with the short Arab houses nearby, even making the local Arab church in Bajamojo look quite small.

The tall chimney emerges from the roof of the factory, with thick black smoke staining the bright blue East African sky, heralding the arrival of industrialization in East Africa.

The Sultanate of Zanzibar also has some small-scale handcraft industries in East Africa, mostly traditional small workshops like blacksmith shops, tailor shops... these traditional handcrafts.

The Bajamojo flour mill is the second instance in the entire East African region to document the use of large machinery in modern industry.

The first was the Tanga sisal processing plant, which has been operating successfully in the market for some time now.

However, sisal is an advantageous industry in East Africa, with only Brazil and some parts of Southeast Asia coming close as competitors.

In contrast, flour milling is a more common industrial industry today, especially in Europe and America, where there are countless such factories, including those on a small scale with only one or two machines.

The Bajamojo flour mill uses steam power, specifically by burning boilers. The power for its boilers comes from the coal developed in the East African interior, driving steam engines to provide the equipment inside the factory with uninterrupted stable power.

All the machinery and equipment in the factory are the latest models imported from the German region, shipped in parts from German ports along the Baltic Sea and finally unloaded at Bajamojo Port.

Under the guidance of professional technicians, dozens of machines were installed. These machines are large, entirely composed of metal components.

The whole workshop is simple and elegant, making it easy for sanitation and disinfection work.

The lighting system uses technology from Berlin Power Company, allowing it to operate continuously even at night. The generators imported are from Siemens.

Closely connected to the production workshop is a massive modern warehouse. Due to the humid climate along the East African coast, which is not conducive to food preservation, the storage requirements for food must be higher.

Construction of the warehouse fully utilizes the best technology and planning of the current era.

To prevent moisture and rats, the ground is fully constructed of concrete, with a drainage system designed by professionals, taking into full account the local climatic environment, and the warehouse is equipped with all kinds of measuring instruments for workers to check the indoor temperature and humidity at any time and to adjust the environment inside the warehouse.

The Bajamojo flour mill is essentially an extension of the agricultural industry, utilizing the local port conditions to directly export processed East African colonial wheat in the form of flour.

Its staff, apart from the professional technicians hired by the Heixinggen Company responsible for maintaining machine operations, primarily consists of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire with some education, supplemented by a few Chinese.

However, the stages of material transportation, packaging, and finished product transportation require more Chinese workers.

These Austro-Hungarian and Chinese immigrants still need simple training, including health and safety education, and familiarization with the machine’s operating principles.

The flour produced by the Bajamojo flour mill will be branded with Heixinggen Company’s trademark for sale in European markets.

The return voyage of the Heixinggen’s ocean-going trade fleet will bring it back to Trieste for direct sale through commercial outlets established by companies in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This opportunity can also be used to recruit immigrants, as this batch of flour proves that East Africa has its produce and is not a barren land.

Once one of the largest slave trade markets in East Africa, with the defeat of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, Bajamojo was also taken over by the East African colonial government.

The East African colonial government only opened a slave market to Arabs at Dar es Salaam Port; slave trade markets in Mombasa, Bajamojo, and other places were closed.

As early as the eighteenth century, Bajamojo was the most important port in East Africa, reaching its peak with more than fifty thousand native slaves boarding ships annually from here.

With the Sultanate of Zanzibar developing Dar es Salaam, Bajamojo gradually declined, and now the East African colonial government is redeveloping Bajamojo.

After all, the excellent ports along the East African coast are still too few. It may seem sufficient now, but as East Africa develops and the population increases, port resources will inevitably become precious in the future.

Currently, factories that can be established in East Africa can only be located along the coast to take advantage of the sea transport and port facilities, allowing machines arriving from Europe to land.

As for inland areas, it is currently unfeasible. Trying to move these bulky, clumsy machines inland entails exorbitant costs.

Additionally, the machines of this era are rather delicate; if drenched by rain, stuck in mud, or mishandled, repair under East African conditions would be challenging.

Wheat, as the primary cereal crop in East African colonies, still has a considerable annual yield, and with the arrival of immigrants and land development, potential will continuously expand.

Rice, on the other hand, although possessing a distance advantage as its cultivation is distributed along the East African coastal plains, fares differently.

However, as Europe primarily utilizes wheat crops, the development of agricultural machinery after industrialization naturally leans toward wheat and other native European crops.

Even if Ernst wanted to import machinery for rice cultivation and processing from Europe, it would be unlikely, similar to how Japan significantly advanced East Asian rice cultivation and processing technologies only after its industrial development in the previous world, achieving the first mechanized rice production in the Far East.

Therefore, developing wheat is an important step for Ernst in entering the food processing market, being simple and easy to operate. Moreover, East Africa boasts a vast land area, extensive arable land, and sufficient rainfall for wheat cultivation.

Currently, the wheat planting area in East African colonies has surpassed the rice planting area, despite the eastern rice growing areas having higher populations than the western wheat growing areas.

Wheat demonstrates its ease of management and drought tolerance, making it very suitable for tropical savanna climates. Particularly in East Africa, which features significant highland characteristics, with lower temperatures than those at the same latitude, yields can reach above average, coupled with the advantage of vast planting areas resulting from the sparse population, yields are quite considerable.

The Bajamojo flour mill is a food processing enterprise established under these potential advantages, extending the agricultural industry chain further, enhancing the agricultural industry level of the East African colonies, and achieving higher profits.