African Entrepreneurship Record

Dielka focused on the issue and directly said, ”No matter what method is used, the surrounding rainforest must be prioritized, but what Cabinda lacks most now is manpower. It’s not feasible to let your stationed troops complete this task, and you don’t have many people either.”

Balco replied, ”Mr. Dielka, you can rest assured about this. Our primary goal now is to address the material reception issues around the Cabinda port. Once the problems around the port are resolved, food and supplies can be secured, and subsequently, government personnel will be stationed to organize manpower for clearing the surrounding rainforest.”

So far, East Africa has not established a government in Cabinda, which is why Balco, a military person, is liaising with Dielka’s team.

Of course, in the future, Cabinda’s military role will not be diminished. As the endpoint of the Congo River and the northern defense line of East Africa, the place will still have troops stationed.

Along the entire right bank of the Congo River, East Africa will deploy a certain force, even though the neighboring Belgians are not strong and do not harbor hostility towards East Africa.

”Given the situation, why don’t we take advantage of the current low population in Cabinda to carry out large-scale burning in the tropical rainforest area, which will reduce future work difficulty? Of course, this requires your coordination, since setting fires is also a technical task, and accidentally burning into the Belgian area might cause some misunderstandings,” said Dielka.

”Mr. Dielka, fire is indeed a method, but in the tropical rainforest area, it’s not easy to accomplish. You’ve mainly worked in the east before, and you know that tropical savannas and tropical rainforests are completely different climates. Here, there are too many rainy days, making it almost impossible for fires to spread significantly. Moreover, even burned forests require manpower for clearing, so it’s better to wait for the population transfer from within the country before solving this problem.”

”You’re right, Lieutenant Balco. However, there are too many problems we’re facing now. Cabinda is completely an isolated island in the rainforest, and we can only rely on maritime connections for links with other areas. There is no clean water source here, no electricity, and due to the rainforest, my surveying work is difficult to complete, making it challenging to undertake various tasks. Building a city here presents significant difficulties.”

Regarding Dielka’s remarks, the Belgians would certainly agree. When Belgium was constructing Black Horn, they encountered the same issues, and even now, Black Horn has just a few thousand people.

The East African government’s position for Cabinda is on par with those big cities on the eastern coast, something Descartes cannot comprehend because he thinks developing Cabinda is less rational than investing greatly in Luanda.

Of course, many share the same view as Descartes, but Ernst knows that Cabinda may seem insignificant now only due to the times. The real significance of Cabinda lies in its abundant oil resources. Just for the oil resources, Ernst places Cabinda on the list of important East African cities, so the sooner its development, the better.

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As time passed, in May, the first batch of government personnel and slaves arrived in Cabinda, and the Cabinda city government was officially established.

Subsequently, this makeshift Cabinda city government started collaborating with Dielka in repairing Cabinda’s port.

At the same time, manpower was organized to cut down the surrounding rainforest, and a large quantity of timber was transported through Cabinda to southern regions such as Whale Bay Port and Orange Monde, thus giving the previously undervalued ”timber” in the tropical rainforest a secondary use.

Southwest Africa, being mainly desert climate, faces a shortage of timber and other raw materials, which the development of Cabinda effectively addressed.

At this time, maritime traffic along the West Coast had resumed, increasing the presence of East African ships along the coast. However, unlike the numerous slave-trading ships from before, these were legitimate merchant vessels.

In just a few months, the scale of Cabinda expanded more than fourfold compared to before, exceeding the efforts of several years by Portugal.

Simultaneously, the foreign trade between Cabinda and Belgium initially achieved results, demonstrating that developing Cabinda could fully leverage Belgium, even though Cabinda is not yet abundant in resources. However, some specialties, like the famous ”Cabinda bark,” do exist.

East Africa sold part of the resources produced during the development of Cabinda at low prices to Belgian merchants in Black Horn, thus acquiring some funds. Although a drop in the bucket, they still hold some value.

While Cabinda was being developed, the construction in Luanda and Benguela progressed even faster. Of course, benefiting from Luanda and Benguela’s favorable foundational conditions, East Africa’s investment in these two areas is not exactly large.

The cities maintained their appearance from the Portuguese rule era, mainly focusing on repairing the houses and roads destroyed during wartime.

East Africa’s development of the West Coast gradually fell onto the right track. Of course, the primary focus was on the construction of the Central Railway, with the western line of the Central Railway entering the geological survey stage.

This made labor even tighter and scarcer for East Africa, and the Black forces, who had caused significant trouble for the 331st Division and other troops during the South African War, suffered.

A large number of Black people from the former Congo Kingdom were conscripted into the slave labor army for developing East Africa’s West Coast. For the Angolan Blacks who had troubled East Africa, more severe measures were taken compared to Blacks in other regions.

East Africa fully studied the practices of the northern Belgian Kingdom, utilizing Angolan Blacks as the main force for developing the West Coast. Due to reasons of ”revenge,” they did not enjoy ”worker” conditions.

They became the second group of Black people to be treated differently by East Africa after the Ndebele people. The outcome for the Ndebele was that this group, numbering in the tens of thousands, disappeared completely into history, with most of them physically perishing during the construction of the eastern canal.

And as the number of Angolan Blacks is much higher than that of the Ndebele, the impact on them was more severe, especially in the rainforest development.

By then, East Africa was somewhat desperate. Although the population growth in East Africa was rapid, it couldn’t keep pace with the faster growth of East African territory.

Furthermore, the problems brought about by territorial expansion became more pronounced. At this time, even East Africa’s so-called ”densely populated” areas did not reach the normal national standards of the Eurasian continent.

The population density in Angola and Mozambique was almost comparable to that of Siberia under Tsarist Russia’s rule.

In such a context, East Africa could only rely heavily on Black slaves. Coupled with the strong hostility and conflicts that the Angolan Blacks had shown towards the East African Army during the war, when overseeing the Angolan Blacks, East Africa exhibited unprecedented ”retaliation measures.”

Of course, in comparison to the United States’ methods towards Native Americans, East Africa still fell short, and even the Belgians from neighboring Belgian colonies considered East Africa’s methods too ”lenient.”

By then, the East African government, especially the military on the West Coast, although they dealt with Angolan Blacks with some emotional components, their main purpose was still to maximize their value for Western development.

Naturally, they couldn’t truly annihilate these Blacks, as handling them all would make East Africans themselves do the work, which was very unprofitable.

If it were in the past, they could have done so, with East Africa possessing ample immigrant resources. However, since the German Region no longer exported populations, that model couldn’t continue.