African Entrepreneurship Record

In the context of economic transformation, we cannot overlook East Africa’s primary industry, agriculture. Industrialization doesn’t abandon agriculture but rather further enhances its production efficiency.

For this purpose, Ernst stated at a government work meeting: ”Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy and is the prerequisite for survival and all production. Therefore, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, we still need to focus on agricultural development. The key is to continuously improve agricultural production efficiency, especially by promoting diversified agricultural development, making the most of East Africa’s agricultural advantages, and achieving integrated development between agriculture and industry.”

Previously, Ernst wouldn’t mention the integrated development of agriculture and industry because East Africa’s industrial scale was smaller than its handicrafts. Now, having finally accumulated some wealth, there is confidence to promote joint development between agriculture and industry.

”What is agricultural diversification? And what is its relation to our East African agriculture? Agricultural diversification means not putting all eggs in one basket. For example, regarding staples, East Africa’s two main staples are wheat and rice, but we should know that East Africa’s land is far more talented than other countries in the world in cultivating grain crops like corn, millet, sorghum, and soybeans.”

Of course, these grains can easily achieve high yields in East Africa, but they can’t surpass wheat and rice in terms of taste. However, everyone has their own preferences, and suitable groups will always be found. Therefore, the diet of East Africans has been diverse from the beginning.

”The primary issue that agriculture addresses is food, which is also most people’s first impression of agriculture. However, how agriculture provides fundamental conditions for industrial development is easily overlooked.”

”Take the textile industry as an example. The main raw materials of the textile industry, such as cotton, hemp, and silk, all come from agricultural production activities. In the 19th century, the textile industry was the world’s largest industry.”

”As the first industrialized country, Britain’s early industrialization was driven entirely by the textile industry, including the Black Slaves trade in America, which was stimulated by the labor demands of cotton plantations.”

”In the 19th century, agriculture provided the majority of raw materials for industry, with mining in second place.”

In the future, with technological advancement, there will be the chemical industry, but even that still relies on agriculture and mining to provide the most basic raw materials; it essentially expands on the attributes of raw materials.

In East Africa, both agriculture and mining are thriving but not developed, as their production efficiency still doesn’t reach the levels of European and American countries. Of course, this excludes countries like Tsarist Russia and other Eastern European countries.

To be honest, a country like Tsarist Russia finds it more challenging to develop agriculture than East Africa, dictated by its climate, regardless of output, variety, or area.

Tsarist Russia only has the world’s largest area of fertile black soil farmland, but apart from that, it has no advantages. The black soil is the most fertile, but the water and heat conditions are poor, allowing only one season of production a year.

Moreover, Tsarist Russia’s usable land area is far less than East Africa’s. Comparing usable land, East Africa ranks first in the world, followed by the United States, then the Far East Empire.

East Africa’s farmland is mainly provided by several large plateaus, naturally incomparable to the contiguous vast plains of North America. Merely the Congo rainforest and deserts take up more than three million square kilometers of East African land.

But the western United States also has the massive Rocky Mountains, occupying one-third of the U.S. area, and the U.S. land area is much smaller than East Africa’s.

Of course, East Africa’s agricultural conditions have their own disadvantages, namely land quality, which mainly depends on later management and improvement. In the 21st century, much land relies on fertilizers and scientific farming methods. Moreover, East Africa’s overall land quality is still superior to that of the Far East Empire.

Once East Africa takes Mozambique, it can also own its black soil, filling a gap in East Africa’s soil resources, although Mozambique’s black soil area is much smaller.

Ernst continued: ”So you must see the correlation between agriculture and industry. The Agriculture Department and the Industry Department should communicate more. Simply put, the Agriculture Department used to interact more with the Foreign Trade Department because we mainly focused on basic grain exports, but now with the Industry Department involved, we must improve the added value of agricultural products. By doing so, exporting them can gain more value and extend the industrial chain.”

”For example, canned goods, our East African canned fruit industry is very popular in Tsarist Russia and also solves the issue of perishability and storage difficulty of fruits, opening up their market. Related factories also solve some employment problems for the nationals.”

”Or take our sisal industry, which has developed rapidly in East Africa over the years. However, East Africa’s sisal processing plants were previously inefficient and small in capacity. After nearly twenty years of effort, East African sisal processing has finally rid of external reliance, and we can meet customer demand for various industrial products like sisal rope and fabric.”

Ernst rambled on, mainly to enlighten his subordinates, as sitting in the office all day won’t let them discover business opportunities.

”Finally, there’s the issue of animal husbandry, one of the three major components of East African agriculture.”

Currently, East African agriculture is divided into three main parts: economic crop cultivation, grain crop cultivation, and animal husbandry.

”Apart from solving the issue of raw materials like meat, dairy, and leather, animal husbandry mainly provides power for agricultural and industrial production, so the expansion of livestock farming must continue.”

Steam engines, such clumsy things, are unaffordable in many parts of East Africa and not easy to move; this was the case in Europe too.

Currently, the main force in agriculture is still human and animal power. Besides the demands of agricultural and industrial production, transportation and logistics are heavily dependent on animal labor.

Therefore, expanding the scale of animal husbandry is crucial for current East Africa and is an essential part of increasing East African productivity.

The contribution rate of animal husbandry and economic crop cultivation to East Africa’s economy is actually greater than that of grain crop cultivation. Of course, food issues are fundamental; without being well-fed, there are no qualifications to discuss development.

Everything in East Africa is based on the grain farming industry’s ability to meet domestic demand and also export, involving agriculture’s significant role in the early stages of industrialization, which is the accumulation of primitive capital.

In the early days, East Africa’s military expenses and national construction funds relied heavily on the grain farming industry. Economic crop cultivation cycles are longer than grain crop planting cycles. For instance, products like tea, rubber, and coffee all require seven or eight years of development in East Africa before generating revenue, and have only recently reached a scale that can compete internationally.

The rationale is straightforward. The first step in developing native East Africa is naturally solving the issue of immigrants’ food, so early agriculture inevitably focused on grain crop planting. Once subsistence issues were resolved, attention could then shift to the more profitable economic crop cultivation and animal husbandry development.

”In summary, agricultural development can drive industrial development. Agriculture is East Africa’s advantageous industry, and the East African industrial departments should actively connect with agricultural departments, further converting agricultural advantages into industrial development advantages. Multi-department cooperation is also a necessary choice and future trend for governance in large countries,” Ernst emphasized at last.