African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 626: Chapter 304 Work Report

The first East African Food Festival was quite informal, and the dishes were very ordinary, with almost no innovation. However, the East African government’s goal was more to promote awareness of food safety through this food festival.

This can be seen from the ingredients provided by the East African government, most of which were very common in East Africa.

At the same time, there were so-called ”nutrition” experts educating the East African public, just like how Western capitalists ”hyped” desserts. In East Africa, this led to experts saying that sugar intake must be moderate, and excessive sugar consumption might lead to a long list of diseases.

This went against the 19th-century worldwide media and interest groups’ blind pursuit of sugar. In fact, the sugar crop industry in East Africa is not exaggerated compared to other countries at the same latitude, though it is foreseeable that East African sugar production could reach quite an exaggerated level in the future.

Ernst just didn’t want East Africa to become like America, a country with an excess of sugar in people’s bodies, so he set a baseline for them in advance.

Anyway, the expansion of planting will continue, as there is a strong global demand for sugar, large-scale planting is profitable, and industrial production will consume a large portion, such as in the military industry.

If it weren’t for not being able to keep it up, Ernst would have wanted to create an East African national dietary guideline to guide the dietary habits of East Africans.

However, since this was the first East African Food Festival, its content and procedures were quite simple, yet it still attracted widespread attention.

The East African people had no choice but to pay attention, as their important sources of East African news were either newspapers, government announcements, or hearsay.

In fact, Ernst was not very concerned about this food festival, but Constantine and Prince Karl were quite interested.

Meanwhile, Ernst was listening to the government’s report on the achievements and effectiveness of East African waterworks over the past decade and a half.

”From 1865 until last year, over the span of fifteen years, we in East Africa have rectified more than 23,000 kilometers of river channels, of which local projects accounted for over eighty percent, while high-standard projects made up about twenty percent. More than sixty percent of these were completed within five years, greatly improving conditions for domestic river navigation, irrigation, and flood control.”

”We have constructed and strengthened river embankments for over 5,780 kilometers, with three billion cubic meters of earthwork, excavated 763 kilometers of canals, established 1.08 million small water conservancy projects, and built 27 large waterworks projects that benefit over 10,000 acres each.”

”The effectively and fully irrigated area of arable land nationwide has been increased to 35 million hectares, mainly concentrated in the Great Lakes Region, coastal plain production areas, inland plateau production areas, and parts of Matebel Province.”

The focus is on ”effective” and ”sufficient.” If these two qualifiers are removed, then the size of developed arable land in East Africa would double. However, many of the rest may still rely on rainfall due to incomplete irrigation facilities.

The large-scale development in East Africa still has a long way to go for the African continent, which has missed out on thousands of years. Agricultural superpowers like the United States have taken hundreds of years to achieve today’s agricultural achievements. East Africa cannot simply achieve in a few decades what other countries have taken centuries, or even millennia, to complete.

”Last year, the grain yield per mu in irrigated areas nationwide increased by about 31 jin compared to ten years ago, reaching around 247 jin, with waterworks construction playing an important role in this.”

The increase in grain production is certainly related to East Africa’s waterworks construction, but it is not the only factor. Other contributing factors include the promotion of scientific planting techniques, improvement in the performance of agricultural tools, and East Africa overcoming various setbacks and gradually setting things right.

After all, East Africa is a completely unfamiliar land for East Africans. The climate, soil, and precipitation of this land are entirely different from those of the Eurasian continent.

The simplest example is the pattern of the rainy season in various parts of East Africa: its timing, size, and frequency, all of which require exploration by the East African government, agricultural experts, meteorological experts, farmers, and others.

In the early days, East Africa often experienced crop reductions and failures due to misjudgments about the timing or scale of the rainy season. It took East Africans more than a decade to gain a clearer understanding of the patterns and changes.

Waterworks construction has served as both a stabilizer and a catalyst for East African agricultural development, reducing the impact of natural conditions on agriculture and making significant contributions to the steady increase in East African grain production.

”Aside from cereal crops, economic crop planting areas have also greatly benefited. Last year, there was an increase of 1.3 million hectares in economic crop areas, bringing the total national economic crop planting area to more than 23 million hectares. As waterworks construction progresses, more places, especially in the northern and inland plateau production areas, can be converted into fertile fields.”

”Moreover, with the improvement of waterworks facilities, some lands that could only grow one or two crops annually in the past can now grow an additional crop, so that East Africa’s cultivated area for grain in recent years has not increased significantly, yet can still keep up with the population growth rate.”

”And by 1880, we still have larger space to adjust and build East Africa’s waterworks infrastructure. Especially in the past three years, the East African waterworks construction field has developed effectively, more than all the preceding fifteen years combined. As time passes, we optimistically estimate that we will be able to complete the tasks of basic farmland and waterworks infrastructure construction in East Africa within ten years.”

Hmm, Ernst was reasonably satisfied with this speed. Achieving this effect for a young country like East Africa is indeed not easy.

As for the ten-year time frame mentioned by subordinates, that is only to lay a rough foundation. As time passes and science and technology progress, the goals that East Africa currently pursues will inevitably undergo significant changes.

Ernst: ”Nationwide waterworks construction projects have only just started on the right track. However, with the accumulation of the past decade and a half, East Africa’s current conditions are much better than before. This is also why we can transform East Africa’s natural environment further.”

After all, world-class engineering projects such as East African waterworks construction require immense manpower, resources, and financial expenditure, as well as adequate preparation time.

In terms of manpower, East Africa realized ”population registration and administration” for Black people, filling the significant gap in the labor force caused by the end of slavery. Additionally, there was the robust growth of East African immigration population. If the East African immigration population had remained at the million level, then even if the whole country were mobilized, accomplishing just this one task would have been extremely difficult.

However, after the East African immigration population surpassed ten million, East Africa truly could concentrate its efforts on major projects, for instance, while ensuring agricultural planting, achieving comprehensive development in multiple fields.

Agricultural development provided a guarantee for East Africa to undertake large-scale national projects. Otherwise, East Africa would be unable to solve the labor’s food problem alone. Meanwhile, agricultural development addressed a large portion of East Africa’s funding shortages.

At the same time, East Africa’s various projects also fed back into its agricultural development and value, all achieved over the past decade and a half.

This accumulation of more than ten years facilitated East Africa’s breakthrough from quantitative to qualitative improvements. As the report stated, in the past three years, East Africa’s waterworks engineering construction has surpassed the accumulated construction from the previous fifteen years.

Moreover, each year it has been achieving growth at a considerable pace, rapidly filling the void in this field for East Africa, bringing the prevalence of East African waterworks facilities up to the standard of normal countries, and even surpassing many countries in South America.