African Entrepreneurship Record

Ernst: ”Militarily, try not to interfere with Matebel Province. The railway department should prepare in advance, especially for the war readiness work of the two Portuguese colonies. If war breaks out, completely erase Mozambique and Angola from the map, thoroughly opening up the land passage between the eastern and western oceans of East Africa.”

After all, for East Africa, the importance of the two Portuguese colonies is higher than that of the current Cape Town. Taking these two colonies would solve more than half of East Africa’s national defense security issues, while also better enabling nationwide layouts for economy, transportation, and industry.

”Regardless of when the enemy starts the war, we need to set a timeline. After this timeline arrives, we must thoroughly resolve the Portuguese matter, just like when we attacked the Transvaal Republic before, we will take the initiative,” Ernst continued.

”So, when should we choose this timeline?” Felix asked.

Ernst thought for a moment and said, ”Currently, we are vigorously developing the economy in East Africa, so the war cannot greatly affect nationwide production work, especially now, as East Africa is under the backdrop of laying the foundation for industry and infrastructure.”

Now East Africa’s economic development has transitioned from chaotic to orderly, because East Africa is a new nation and operates differently from most countries in the world, with no benchmarks for reference.

Coupled with the late start in cultivating its own talents, East Africa’s bureaucratic group lacks governance experience compared to other regions of the world, and it can be said they have no governance experience.

Thus, the early industrialization process in East Africa was very chaotic, causing great damage to economic development throughout the seventies. However, this was a necessary social development stage for East Africa to undergo.

Currently, in terms of economic development, the East African government has spent over ten years refining their system, gradually catching up to the world average. Precisely because of this, East Africa has always refrained from acting rashly and aggressively.

For instance, in the seventies, if East Africa had a good foundation, Ernst could have launched a massive number of projects to achieve complete industrial transformation in East Africa.

Because during the 1873 economic crisis, elements of industrial development such as technology, industry, machinery, etc., could all be obtained from Europe.

However, the reality was that East Africa couldn’t accomplish this at the time due to the lack of talent and a sound system.

This situation resembles the industrialization efforts of the Far East Empire in a previous life, where Soviet experts were teaching step-by-step. Ernst can only imagine how tired the Soviets were due to the illiteracy rate in the Far East Empire; even highly educated intellectuals needed to learn Russian separately, and how many misunderstandings were caused by translation issues in between?

East Africa’s situation is slightly better. The obligatory education in German was well disseminated, so German immigrants to East Africa mostly had a basic literacy level. Combined with the promotion of German education and literacy campaigns in East Africa, even older Far East or Slavic immigrants can write some German words. As for speaking and listening, there is naturally no problem, as not knowing German in East Africa would render one nearly immobile, making it an essential survival skill.

Moreover, speaking German is not correlated with cultural level; it is linked closely with the language environment. After staying in East Africa for a long time, individuals naturally lean towards German and are eventually assimilated.

Results from German compulsory education overflowed into East Africa, allowing seamless basic communication between East Africa and German regions, which was crucial for East Africa to connect with some German industries in the seventies.

Of course, this was also related to East Africa accepting many mature industrial workers from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the United States at the time; this was particularly evident in the development of the steel and railway industries.

However, at the time, East Africa’s maximum capacity was constrained, and now East Africa is supplementing these shortcomings, especially in the development of education. Although the compulsory education level in East Africa is low, the scale is large, with a considerable number undertaking study abroad annually, and several graduation classes have already returned home in recent years, providing a foundation for the development of the automotive and electricity industries in East Africa.

Besides these, the most important aspect is the infrastructure construction work in East Africa, with railway, highway, bridge, and nationwide water conservancy projects all steadily advancing.

In other words, East Africa is currently in an important economic transition period, transforming from an agricultural nation to an industrial one, laying a solid foundation for industrial development.

Ernst said: ”Now, the major projects in East Africa are the Hessen Province Railway and the national water conservancy project. The national water conservancy project progress is decent, but the project is large, with a slow construction period, requiring about four or five more years. The Hessen Railway project is also considerable, but the main challenge lies in its construction difficulty.”

The Hessen Railway is a tropical railway, but many of the regions it crosses are tropical rainforests. East Africa has already witnessed the difficulty of building railways in tropical rainforests, primarily due to natural disasters caused by rainwater, where even tens of tons of steel can be directly washed away by floods.

Therefore, the primary task in building the Hessen Railway is ”water management.” To this end, the number of railway bridges, culverts, and drainage channels to be constructed for the Hessen Railway is three times more than all previous railways combined in East Africa. Due to the Mitumba Mountains, some sections also require the construction of tunnels, making the Hessen Railway the most challenging construction endeavor in East African history.

Of course, compared to the Siberian Railway, the difficulty of the Hessen Railway, the Siberian Railway takes precedence because Siberian Railway is unique, whereas many railways constructed in tropical rainforest regions exist. However, East Africa’s Hessen Railway is the longest, although it amounts to less than one-fifth of the Siberian Railway.

”These projects should finish around the same time, and once completed, we can free up a significant amount of manpower, military, and financial resources, making it optimal to start a war then. It is currently 1884, and the nationwide water conservancy project should wrap up before 1890, while the Hessen Railway should finish earlier. So, let’s set 1890 as the timeline.”

Ernst continued: ”We still have at least five years in between, and Mozambique and Angola won’t remain static. To my knowledge, the Maputo port renovation should be completed, afterward, the Portuguese should have other defense projects underway. Considering their manpower shortage, they may focus on city-centered defense deployments.”

”Therefore, within these years, you must understand the Portuguese military deployments and fortification systems in their two colonies.”

”Additionally, we need time to complete military adjustments, which would take at least two to three years, and the Portuguese probably won’t act alone. If they are to take initiative, they will likely synchronize with the British, so evaluating the timing of the Portuguese military engagement primarily involves monitoring the military movements of the South African British.”

”Currently, the British in South Africa have only more than twenty thousand troops, the rest are mainly Transvaal people. The Transvaal Rebel Army has absorbed many Orange troop units, which definitely require integration, so the British also need preparation time.”

”We mainly need to watch if the British are transferring troops from outside regions to Cape Town, indicating a large number of troops moving into Cape Town, which means the British are becoming impatient.”