African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 149: Chapter 139 Central Asia Horse Bandits

By the end of July, as the war ended, so did the wave of migration to East Africa. In just half a year, with Ernst’s recruitment, Southern German regions were quickly depleted.

To seize the newly acquired land from the war, the Heysinger consortium increased the intensity of immigration, not only using all its own ships but also extensively hiring ships from the Nordic regions.

Now that the war is over and the number of immigrants is sufficient, the immigration potential of Southern Germany has been exhausted by Ernst in a short period. It will take some time before another wave can be accumulated.

The number of German immigrants has dropped to a low level, and due to early development, the immigration from the Far East and Austria-Hungary is also at a low level.

The Far East is currently in a very stable political period, especially after the Nian Army was pacified, the northern order has been re-established.

The large-scale war and chaos that have plagued the Central Plains and North China for years have basically ended. From the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the Nian Army uprising, many areas from south to north were almost depopulated, and now the rulers of Qing Country need to restart local production, requiring a large population.

Furthermore, the immigration conditions to East Africa have always been relatively high, screening out many opium addicts and sick people from the countryside just based on health requirements.

Those with too weak physiques have almost no chance of survival at sea, and the immigration conditions to the Far East are certainly worse than those to Europe.

After all, European immigrants who may visit home in the future would scare off a group of people if they complained about the poor conditions on the ships to East Africa.

As for Far East immigrants, they have no choice but to accept what they are given, especially those traveling on Dutch ships, which were essentially mixed passenger and cargo, with conditions so poor they were almost comparable to Black Slaves.

Fortunately, East Africa paid based on the survival rate, so Dutch shipowners didn’t go too far in their treatment.

Among the many immigrants, only those from Paraguay and the Middle East remained stable.

The war in Paraguay is still ongoing, and the Allies are getting closer to victory. The staff of the Heysinger consortium follows the advancing front lines, slowly spreading their recruitment operations into Paraguay’s interior.

Immigrants from the Middle East are all women, with Zanzibar merchants’ businesses growing larger. Now, not only do they trade slaves with East Africa, but they have also taken over product promotion work from the Heysinger consortium.

Many goods and tobacco enter the Middle East, and Zanzibar merchants only need to pay with women from East African colonies.

This is essentially a trade of people, but the Sultanate of Zanzibar is enjoying it. Now the source of immigrants from the Middle East is not limited to Armenians within the Ottoman Empire, as they have even established connections with Tsarist Russia, expanding their business directly to Central Asia of Tsarist Russia.

And given the integrity of Tsarist Russian nobles, naturally, there is none. The products of the Heysinger consortium are considered hard currency in Tsarist Russia.

The Tsarist Russian officials in Central Asia certainly cannot compare with the European masters, with conditions only slightly better than the Siberian exile areas.

So, Central Asian Tsarist Russian officials find it difficult to make extra profits, but now, they can exchange Turkic women for goods.

For these Tsarist Russian officials, this is a trade without capital investment. Thus, originally stable Central Asia has recently experienced rampant banditry, specializing in robbing wealth and women.

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With the decrease in immigration, Ernst conveniently redirected more maritime capacity to goods transportation. In the past few months of the war, to quickly fill the gap in newly occupied areas, the Heysinger consortium had exercised excessive immigration, spending large sums of money in an instant.

Now, with the population immigration in the whole of East Africa surpassing a million, Ernst is not in a hurry to carry out more immigration. The immigrant numbers can merely revert to normal levels monthly.

What Ernst is truly concerned about now is reducing the construction costs of the colony, realizing the in-situ establishment of cement, iron products, food processing industries in East Africa.

For a long time, modern industrial materials like cement in East Africa have been heavily reliant on imports, yet there is no shortage of raw materials for such industries in East Africa, and they can completely produce them locally. What’s missing in East Africa is merely the facilities like factories.

The first country in Europe to industrialize cement production was the United Kingdom in 1824, after which cement factories sprang up throughout Europe.

Cement is not exactly high-tech, of course, this so-called high-tech is relative to Euro-American countries, and countries outside of Euro-America still need a large amount imported.

Acquiring cement production equipment is not difficult for the Heysinger consortium (Asia’s first cement factory was built in Japan in 1871). Purchasing a small cement factory in the German regions can solve the issue.

With so many states in the German regions, each having some industries, Ernst found it quite easy to acquire some technology and factories.

He acted swiftly, and soon the Heysinger consortium purchased a poorly managed cement factory in Hamburg. Naturally, Ernst did not plan to conduct cement production in Germany, as the cement industry there is already highly competitive, with not much profit. Plus, the Heysinger consortium doesn’t have large-scale mines in Europe to support these traditional industries.

Also, the giants in traditional industries are beyond Ernst’s reach, so the Heysinger consortium grew by focusing on light industry and relatively advanced technology sectors.

At present, many electricity companies and technology research and development companies in Germany have investments from Heixinggen Bank behind them, which will be the future cash cows of the Heysinger consortium.

After acquiring the cement factory, both the equipment and personnel were shipped directly from the port of Hamburg to East Africa using our ships.

It was second-hand and the loss caused by the urgency of the sale made it extremely affordable, and the cement factory employees were dispatched to East Africa under the guise of aid construction by Ernst.

Should they stay in East Africa, these workers surely wouldn’t stay under their own will, so Ernst employed a high salary plus dispatch method to convince them to go to East Africa to guide the construction of the cement factory.

The first cement factory was located in Dar es Salaam, and sea transport from Hamburg to Dar es Salaam was quite convenient, and it facilitated the shipping process.

Following this, Ernst plans to build a cement factory in several key cities in East Africa, with the first batch selected being Mombasa, Dodoma, Mbeya, Kisumu, and Songea.

In East African cities, which are, to be precise, small towns, the population is completely insufficient, and ordinary residents don’t need them at all, as traditionally built houses are quite sufficient, at least for now.

An investment of about five thousand British Pounds is planned; this sum is indeed very small, because East Africa doesn’t need that much. Cement is mainly used in special sections and East African cities, so later cement factories’ scales are even smaller than that of Dar es Salaam.

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Dar es Salaam.

The factory building for the first East African cement factory is being constructed quickly, and before the machinery and equipment were shipped to East Africa, the staff in Dar es Salaam had received the news via telegraph.

This cement factory will become the largest cement production factory in the current East African colony and maintain this status for some time.

Because the project needs to be launched quickly to meet the needs of the East African colony as much as possible, its scale cannot be small.

Later on, even if a few more small factories are built, it is also to reduce transportation costs. If the East African colony can solve the transportation issue, whether to build them or not wouldn’t really matter much currently.

And what East Africa doesn’t lack is manpower. When developing northern Kenya, the East African colony captured a large number of tribal populations to supplement the labor force, so during the northwest battlefield, East Africa didn’t capture natives in the northwest, instead driving them all out.