African Entrepreneurship Record

Resource-intensive industries, also known as land-intensive industries, are clearly industries that rely on land and related resources, the most typical of which are agriculture and mining.

East Africa is a typical great power in agriculture and mining. There’s no need to elaborate on agriculture, and with the expansion of East Africa’s land area, the mining industry is rapidly growing, especially in the central and southern regions of East Africa, forming many cities that have risen due to mineral resources.

With the economic cooperation between East Africa and Germany and Austria, the export volume of East African mineral resources has begun to rise annually. Agriculture is not much of a concern, as East African chemical industry is lagging, and agriculture is still primarily organic. However, the pollution from mineral resource development is quite severe on land and rivers.

Take Kabwe City as an example. Don’t underestimate Kabwe as just an unknown city; in reality, in the past life, Kabwe was one of the world’s ten most polluted cities.

The advantageous minerals of Kabwe City are lead and zinc, which cause severe heavy metal pollution during extraction, and it’s almost irreversible. Yet human demand for lead and zinc is indispensable, so places like Kabwe City, as lead-zinc production areas, cannot be outright stopped by East Africa. On the contrary, production must be increased to meet the demands of industries like electricity, military, metallurgy, and chemicals.

”Regarding industrial pollution prevention, our government must not turn a blind eye, blindly pursuing production efficiency while ignoring environmental issues, especially inland environmental concerns,” Ernst emphasized during a government meeting.

”Mineral resource development produces a significant amount of pollution, categorized in order as solid, liquid, and gas.”

”Gas pollution prevention is indeed challenging, but solid and liquid pollution issues must be addressed conveniently. After all, a significant amount of mining slag and toxic substances generated in resource development severely pollutes land and rivers.”

”This is more severe than agriculture. Although agriculture has a significant ecological impact, agriculture itself is part of the ecosystem and has a substitutive role, whereas the mining industry has almost a negative ecological impact. If we don’t pay attention to this issue, then in fifty or sixty years, many cities today will either directly decline due to resource depletion or ecological issues.”

”Of course, it doesn’t sound very serious, as cities can be redeveloped. With decline comes rise, but when coupled with pollution to land and rivers, it’s completely different. These cities and surrounding areas will become scars difficult to heal on the future East African land.”

”Although East Africa’s land resources are abundant, they are finite. This is true for any country or region worldwide. For example, if land around the Nile River becomes uninhabitable due to pollution, then Egypt would essentially be nominal.”

”Certainly, we East Africa cannot be compared to Egypt, as the amount of developable land in Egypt is not comparable even to East Africa’s Northern Province, but similarly, our industrial scale is not comparable to Egypt.”

Ultimately, environmental management is akin to room hygiene. Every day, the room’s owner produces various household waste. Diligent people clean up their trash every day and conveniently throw it into the downstairs trash can, while sloppy people accumulate it until it won’t fit before starting to clean.

Ernst couldn’t decisively say which model is superior. After all, the room ends up clean either way, but diligent people live in a clean house every day, while sloppy people endure a period before cleaning.

The main focus of this meeting was actually on waste slag and waste stone management, and the method isn’t difficult. To sum up in four words: centralized storage.

First, we need to consider staying away from rivers and farmland, then residential areas, placing it in regions difficult to utilize and not causing severe ecological impacts.

Furthermore, mining slag may not lack secondary utilization value. In the 19th century, mineral smelting technology was quite backward, and perhaps there are resources in the waste slag not yet extracted. Future technological advancements may make secondary utilization possible.

After discussing the mining industry, the topic returned to agriculture. Ultimately, agriculture has the most extensive impact and coverage as resource-intensive industries. After all, valuable mineral resources aren’t everywhere, but agriculture is ubiquitous. Even deserts can develop some special small-scale agriculture.

Regarding agriculture, it’s the same old problems, including water system management, arable land development, and market integration.

The saying goes, ”Cheap grain hurts farmers,” but in East Africa, not necessarily so. Due to collective agriculture, the damage is state assets, so agricultural development naturally needs to meet international market demand, which naturally relates to mechanization, crop selection, and fertilizer and pesticide production.

The direction of mechanization has long been established, and crop selection naturally prioritizes transitioning to economic crop planting, with emphasis on the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

With economic cooperation between East Africa and countries like Germany and Austria, and the trend of East African chemical industry development is already clear, but the use of fertilizers and pesticides must be cautious.

Ernst is evidently not a supporter of ”green agriculture” in former Africa. Fertilizers and pesticides, which enhance yields, should be used where needed, and more so, East Africa will vigorously develop ”agricultural genetic engineering.”

However, the use of fertilizers and pesticides, especially pesticides, must not be reckless. In this regard, Ernst proposed: ”Safety, sustainability, reasonable dosage” these three key principles.

Some pesticides are not just pesticides, they can also pose a threat to people, considering the lax management of this by countries in the 19th century.

All this naturally requires East African researchers to first conduct experiments, determine side effects, and then selectively promote them on a large scale.

Reduce pollution as much as possible, and although East Africa will do more than other countries under these circumstances, the overall economic impact on East Africa is minimal.

Pollution is essentially something that belongs to oneself, just like health. Capitalists might run away after tapping their pockets, but governments everywhere will still have to work on solving environmental issues; no one can escape this difficulty.

Furthermore, East Africa should pay more attention to this issue, as East Africa is one of the world’s largest countries with colored metal reserves, and mineral resources are concentrated in inland regions, making environmental concerns more critical.

Coastal pollution tends to drift to other sea areas with ocean currents, and due to issues over maritime sovereignty, even if you don’t pollute, other countries might.

Clearly, in the future, the country most severely polluting the Indian Ocean will be India, so Ernst has no psychological burden dumping waste into the sea.

As the meeting concluded, the East African Government began a new round of work, especially in replanning and managing mines and ore refining plants.

The focus is storage management of mine slag and key protection of the river environment in mining areas. This is actually simple; after addressing the storage of mine slag, the situation of river pollution will also be reduced, except for some liquid sources of pollution, which cannot be helped.

Cities with slightly better conditions can only carry out simple sedimentation and filtering of polluted water before discharging it into rivers, lakes, and seas, but this greatly reduces the pressure on East African inland rivers.

This series of efforts indeed brings some trouble to East African industrial and agricultural production, but the issue is not significant. After all, the backbone of East African economy is public ownership. If it were private enterprises, there might be complaints since more manpower and production processes are required, but for East African enterprises, naturally, it goes as the government says, with no issues regarding execution.