African Entrepreneurship Record

As the current world’s leading energy source and East Africa’s primary energy source, coal maintains its unshakeable dominant position.

After annexing Angola and Mozambique, East Africa’s coal reserves have further increased, especially in Tete City, Mozambique, which is an important coal-producing region and closely adjacent to the central industrial area and the Malawi Lake Industrial Zone. These two industrial areas are the most densely packed with heavy industry in East Africa. Therefore, the reason for constructing the railway along the Zambia River, from Kilimane City—New Frankfurt City, through Tete, is self-evident.

Compared to other large national territories around the world, East Africa’s coal reserves are relatively small. Countries like Tsarist Russia, the United States, the Far East Empire, and the United Kingdom (Canada, Australia, India) are all big coal nations, with only Brazil having fewer resources.

However, the quality of East Africa’s coal is quite impressive on the global scale, and the quality of coal significantly impacts industrial sectors.

Take for example the secret that allowed Germany to surpass the United Kingdom in steel production capacity—the ”Thomas Steelmaking Method,” which increased coal utilization rates through technical means.

In 1877, the British Thomas and Gillchrist invented the Thomas Steelmaking Method. In Germany and the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, dominated by Prussian warfare, the iron deposits mainly consisted of phosphorus-bearing ores, which could not be efficiently dephosphorized for a long time, leading to high costs and significantly affecting steel production.

The Thomas Steelmaking Method, by adding lime to the Bessemer Converter, solved the dephosphorization problem. The propagation of this technique led to a significant cross-domain growth in Germany’s steel production capacity. In 1879, Germany widely adopted this technology for steel production, solving the dephosphorization issue, making modifications that greatly reduced production costs.

However, East Africa’s coal utilization rate remains quite low, as the quality of East African coal is a different matter compared to Germany’s. Therefore, East Africa’s local scientific researchers need to develop related technologies according to the characteristics of East African coal.

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After summarizing the energy layout of East Africa, everyone began to discuss the next topic.

This time, Yards from the Ministry of Water Resources said, ”Your Royal Highness, this time our ministry wants to address the navigation issues of central and eastern inland rivers. After the national water conservancy construction, the navigability of these rivers has reached a new level, but it’s still vastly inferior compared to the eastern coastal areas.”

”Therefore, our ministry’s idea is to enhance the regional navigability of East African rivers on the East African Plateau and the central plateau, and on this basis, upgrade the rivers in Mozambique and Angola. The water conservancy construction in the latter two places is also a major problem, owing to the minimal development by the Portuguese government during colonial times.”

In Ernst’s view, these requests from the Ministry of Water Resources are not excessive. Though constructing water conservancy facilities initially cost East Africa ”a painful price,” conservatively estimated at no less than seven hundred thousand lives, East Africa can only mourn the black people who sacrificed in the water conservancy projects.

After silently mourning these black people for three seconds, Ernst decisively stated, ”We must promptly improve the agricultural water conservancy facilities in Angola and Mozambique. Although the Portuguese government contributed very little during its period, there is still some foundation, especially in Angola. We will reconstruct and build based on existing water conservancy standards there in line with East Africa’s standards.”

The water facilities in Angola are the most complete among the two major Portuguese African colonies, yet they are still considered shoddy compared to East Africa’s construction standards.

Most of the colonial water conservancy constructions involve local plantations working independently, with very little overall scientific planning. Their materials and tools are also greatly lacking.

Although East African black slaves also work hard, the tools and materials they use are domestically produced by East Africa. Do not underestimate this point; Portuguese colonies could only rely on imports from their homeland, and the cost of these imports was too high. So, to save money, many plantation owners relied entirely on black people to ”miraculously perform miracles with brute force.”

Due to a lack of scientific planning and guidance, water facilities in these two regions are fragmented and vary greatly in quality.

”In this regard, Your Highness, rest assured that with over thirty years of experience, our Ministry of Water Resources has accumulated enough expertise. Now everything is in place, except for the mobilization of manpower and supplies.”

Ultimately, the Ministry of Water Resources needs people. Although they manage many black people, they are regarded as consumables; as for the mobilization of resources, that’s not a major issue. Given the current advanced state of East Africa’s railway and road systems, which are more developed than before, East Africa is also a major grain producer. Though its population is increasing, the expansion of East African territory is even more astonishing.

The newly added population requires food, and boosting grain production might further require land to be reclaimed. Just as East Africa gains more land, it has more room to develop agriculture, which cannot progress without water conservancy projects, thus forming a closed loop.

”For this water conservancy project, our Ministry of Water Resources will need to mobilize no less than two million workers nationwide. Besides constructing water conservancy facilities in Angola and Mozambique, water conservancy work in other regions of the country must also be further improved. This necessitates positive cooperation from other government departments,” said Yards.

”Yes, water conservancy construction has always been a national policy in East Africa. The last time national water conservancy construction started, our national territory was not as large as it is today. Thus, it’s entirely reasonable for the Ministry of Water Resources to request more manpower.”

Ernst naturally supported this point, but this would increase the workload of East African black laborers. Last year, the number of black laborers in East Africa decreased to over nineteen million, a reduction of over three million over four years.

This highlights the extent of East Africa’s exploitation of black laborers. It’s clear that not all of these disappearing three million black people perished on construction sites; a large part was sent away by East Africa, considering the black laborers’ scrapping system in East Africa.

This water conservancy project will have far-reaching impacts on East Africa. Water conservancy construction differs from railways. At the peak, railway construction only required over three hundred thousand black laborers.

However, water conservancy construction requires millions of laborers, and it’s not solely black laborers contributing the effort; many East African citizens participate in the water conservancy construction as well.

Based on the experience of the first national water conservancy construction, conservatively, over twenty million people will participate this time.

Water conservancy construction is a nationwide project, covering areas across the country and involving thousands of rivers, thousands of reservoirs, and even including every field channel, which is part of water conservancy construction.

Without mechanization today, all these projects rely on manpower. Moreover, East Africa’s approach is the ”speedrun” style; without an extreme mobilization mode, East Africa couldn’t have achieved a leapfrog leap of national power in over thirty years and become the world’s major grain producer and a leading economic crop nation.

Therefore, in Ernst’s view, the Ministry of Water Resources’ request for two hundred thousand blacks is quite conservative. Taking the Far East Empire as an example, in the late 20th century, it mobilized several hundred million people nationwide to construct water conservancy projects.

The Far East Empire has a water conservancy history spanning over a thousand years, while East Africa’s history is only over thirty years long; in this light, East Africa can’t even compare to the Far East Empire.

So, as a result, there’s no option but to mobilize East Africa’s populace while adding more burdens to black laborers. The tasks of water conservancy projects vary in size. For example, digging new field channels is mostly completed when the land is being reclaimed. However, excavating canals and building reservoirs is where the real difficulty lies.