African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 123: Chapter 118: Busy Farming

As soon as Christmas was over, the immigrants in East Africa resumed their busy lives. Unlike Africa, it was truly winter in Europe, allowing farmers to rest for a while.

In many parts of East Africa, it was the minor rainy season of the year (usually from November to December). While planting crops, the immigrants needed to dredge rivers and ditches, ensuring proper drainage and irrigation.

The climate conditions in the East African colonies, if not extraordinarily favorable, were above the world average level. As long as there was a sufficient water supply, crops like rice could be grown 2.5 seasons a year (five seasons in two years).

The lands currently developed in East Africa were all in areas with abundant water sources, close to rivers and lakes, or regions with plentiful rainfall. Once the water problem was solved, cultivation was not an issue, giving the immigrants plenty to do.

It was only during the crop growth phase that there was leisure time. During this agricultural downtime, the East African colonies would conscript immigrants to conquer other regions.

This was the expansion model of East Africa: civilians during the farming season and soldiers during times of war. Even in the absence of war, militia training would still be organized, leaving little time for idleness.

Neither production nor combat was delayed, forming the basis for the orderly expansion of the East African colonies. Besides the militia, East Africa already had a standing army.

Under normal circumstances, the militia was sufficient to deal with the indigenous people. Only the tough nuts that couldn’t be cracked would warrant the deployment of regular troops.

This situation would only occur during East Africa’s expansion. Once East Africa ceased to expand or had a sufficient population, there would be no need for the militia to engage in combat.

The primary challenge was in clearing the indigenous people. Without enough manpower, it certainly wouldn’t work, as they were familiar with the terrain and could easily hide in the mountains and forests.

The regular army, with its limited manpower, couldn’t possibly play hide and seek with the indigenous people. Therefore, mobilizing the militia forces to conduct large-scale sweeps of conquered areas was necessary.

Even if a few stragglers sneaked through, it wasn’t a concern. Just like many invasive species, even if two or three individuals infiltrated without finding a mate, they couldn’t reproduce a population.

The current situation in the East African colonies reflected this. Although there were certainly a few slip-throughs within East Africa’s borders, having been cut off from society made it difficult for them to survive in the wild, even within the primitive societies of the indigenous tribes.

After all, the good places had all been taken by the immigrants in East Africa. They could only associate with wild animals, and even if their skills allowed them to escape predators’ jaws and evade colonial sweeps, in the end, they could only die alone and in solitude.

For example, most wild animals in Africa were predominantly gregarious, rarely acting alone. Animals’ adaptability to the East African environment was much stronger than that of humans.

If even they needed to stay together for warmth, let alone humans, East Africa was not as densely populated as West Africa for a crucial reason: the small number of people.

The indigenous tribes of East Africa and the animals of the East African savannah were almost evenly matched. But East Africa’s colonial immigrants were different, due to the devastating impact of firearms.

No matter how fierce the wild animals were, one shot was enough to take them down, while the indigenous people required collective effort, needing at least four or five people to deal with one beast. Larger animals like elephants and hippos required the cooperation of the entire village to capture.

...

On Christmas Day, being able to squeeze in time to celebrate was already considered an act of respect by the East African government for traditional holidays.

Every rainy season was the busiest time for East Africa. The inadequate development and poor infrastructure in East Africa posed challenges.

During the rainy season, water would naturally accumulate in low-lying areas, thus inundating them.

This was why the indigenous people avoided living close to rivers; they only needed to go to the riverbanks to fetch water, relying on hunting for a living anyway.

That’s why in documentaries, you often see Africans carrying water pots on their heads to remote riverbanks. Of course, another reason they didn’t live near water sources was the abundance of wildlife in those areas.

For the East African colonies, agriculture was the most crucial industry, and cultivation naturally required proximity to water sources. Meanwhile, wildlife had long been eradicated by the East African government, so most immigrants lived near rivers and lakes.

To draw water from rivers for irrigation, canals needed to be dug, and water wheels and other water-drawing facilities needed to be constructed.

However, during the rainy season in East Africa, some river sections were prone to flooding, so it was necessary to dredge the rivers and build embankments during the rainy season to prevent these threats to residential and farmland areas.

These major projects required the collective effort of the whole colony.

Of course, it was mainly a preventive measure, as the likelihood of actual flooding was not high, only occurring in extreme years with excessive rainfall.

Once preventive measures were in place, any damage could be withstood by the East African colonies.

After all, the land developed by the East African colonies was quite extensive, with only a small portion along the rivers, primarily using canals for irrigation.

Currently, the conditions were challenging, but in the future, when conditions improve, it will be necessary to introduce important tools like pumps, eliminating the need for labor-intensive manual water collection.

In fact, it might not take that long. Machines using primitive power, such as windmills, could be introduced early. Ernst planned to send people to the Netherlands to learn from their experiences.

Initially, the windmills in the Netherlands were imported from the German regions, but the Dutch had invented various new uses for windmills.

Besides water lifting and pumping, windmills were essential power sources for grinding grains, tobacco, oil pressing, felting, papermaking...

With the arrival of the steam age, Dutch windmills gradually declined, but in the ’wild’ lands of East Africa, they still had considerable value.

Anyway, East Africa had no shortage of materials, with sufficient wood and brick and stone, while other materials could be imported from Europe.

The current conditions of the East African colonies did not permit entry into the industrial age, but all the advanced tools and experiences of the agricultural era could still be utilized.

This was mainly to save costs, as the threshold for industrialization was too high and couldn’t be achieved overnight, whereas traditional agricultural tools could be manufactured within the colonies.

Combined with the advanced experiences amassed over millennia from the agricultural era, East Africa’s production efficiency could be pushed to the extreme of the agricultural age.

The agricultural age was only a transitional phase for the East African colonies and would not be perpetuated. Ernst also knew that industrialization was the future, yet building a house required laying a foundation first. Industry without the support of agriculture was a house without roots.

Of course, small-scale industrialization was feasible, but if that were the case, Ernst might as well focus on a small area like Heixinggen. The natural advantages of East Africa couldn’t be wasted, and large-scale industry relied on agricultural independence.

Improving the primitive socioeconomic system of East Africa to the agricultural age was indeed progress, not to mention traversing in a few decades what other countries took centuries or even millennia to experience in agricultural civilization.