African Entrepreneurship Record

Dodoma, Lorraine Town.

”How can you just bulldoze good farmland like that? It’s such a waste. In the Far East, people would scorn you for this!”

Old African farmer Wang Weimo couldn’t help but lament as he watched the land he had toiled on for decades being flattened.

”Dad, you can’t cling to those old notions. East Africa is different from other places because there’s plenty of land. I heard that East Africa is now the world’s second largest nation. This bit of land is nothing to East Africa.” Wang Weimo’s eldest son, Wang Lun, tried to persuade him.

”You rascal, what do you know? Selling your ancestors’ land without feeling pain. Back in the Far East... your grandparents didn’t exactly starve to death, but it was close. Just because there’s more crops now doesn’t mean you can be wasteful! What do you mean the world’s second largest nation? It doesn’t lessen the value of this land.” Wang Weimo lectured him angrily.

Wang Lun felt exasperated. He couldn’t stand it when his father harped on his past life in the Far East. Although his father’s days in the Far East Empire were indeed tough, to Wang Lun and the new generation of East Africans, those ’hard’ days were nothing but tall tales.

Of course, as a child, Wang Lun might have loved hearing his father’s stories of life and legendary experiences in the Far East. But even the most fascinating story gets tiring after a decade or so, especially when mixed with preaching.

”Alright, Dad, aren’t you tired? Have some water. It’s not that I don’t understand or appreciate the value of crops. I know it’s a pity to destroy the farmland, but for our country to develop, we must adopt new technologies and ideas. This machine-plowed road is essential. Think about it, how could the old narrow paths withstand a big machine like a tractor? It’d probably collapse just under its weight.”

Wang Weimo glanced at the ”iron hunk” in the distance and said with disdain, ”That tractor isn’t meant for plowing? I’m not sure it’s as useful as an ox. It had a breakdown just a week after it arrived, and it took forever to fix it. It’s just not durable.”

Wang Lun reassured him, ”It’s different. Technology progresses. There was a time when domestic tractors broke down half a day into use, and a whole day was spent on repairs. Then it developed to only malfunctioning every two or three days. Now it’s once every week or two. This progress is visible. In the future, it might not even happen for months, or years.”

Since the introduction of tractors from Mozambique, the performance of East African tractors has greatly improved. Under this premise, the East African government began to promote tractors in other agricultural areas.

”But now they’re still unreliable. Hardly anyone in our town has seen a tractor. It was only when someone from the city came that they got that pile of scrap metal working.” Wang Weimo was dismissive of his son’s argument.

”Hey, everything takes time. Didn’t you say that electricity was useless when it first arrived in our town? Now you see it’s essential. The trend is for machines to replace livestock power. Only if I’d been born a few years later could I have gone to school. Look how smart the younger ones are. They figured out electricity immediately. It’s the same with tractors. Few people understand them now, but there’ll definitely be more in the future.”

These words resonated with Wang Weimo. Riding on the wave of compulsory education in East Africa, there emerged a large group of ”new youth” with a certain level of education and vision, different from their parents’ generation.

Of course, Wang Weimo’s eldest son, Wang Lun, didn’t catch this wave because he was born in the Far East and was already six when they arrived in East Africa.

At six, in those days in East Africa, was not considered very old. The first batch to receive compulsory education — since immigrants to East Africa hadn’t yet given birth and there were few children of school age — included many twelve or thirteen-year-old primary school students.

But in Wang Lun’s time, compulsory education in East Africa was just starting, so it was initially only promoted in towns. Lorraine Town, where Wang Lun lived, hadn’t developed yet and wasn’t even a village at the time, just called a colonial outpost.

As a result, Lorraine Outpost didn’t even have a primary school, and Wang Lun naturally didn’t have the chance to get an education.

However, his younger brothers seized this opportunity. After arriving in East Africa, Wang Weimo, who had been malnourished, experienced a second spring and was able to raise more children. So Wang Lun ended up with four younger brothers. It should have been six, but two died young.

In fact, according to his father, he had an older brother who died shortly after birth back in the Far East.

Even now, his brother’s remains are still in the Far East, which is a regret for his parents. An early death was considered inauspicious, and now that the family had emigrated thousands of miles away to East Africa, it seemed even more pitiable. But given the times, they could only sigh and move on.

”You’re right, kid. I’m getting old and can’t keep up with the times!” Wang Weimo sighed.

”Dad, what are you saying? You’re the treasure of our town, our evergreen tree.” Wang Lun comforted him.

In truth, Wang Weimo was only fifty-three years old, but in a country like East Africa, he was among the longer-lived ordinary folk. Someone like East Africa’s King Constantine, approaching a hundred years of age, was a true evergreen rarity.

Even though Wang Weimo felt it was a pity, East Africa’s rural reforms wouldn’t change. With the development of tractors and automobiles, many original farm roads were clearly no longer fit for the new era.

Hence, farm roads in Lorraine Town needed improvement. Because it wasn’t very far from Dodoma, it was also a pilot area for East Africa’s high-standard farmland construction.

With the times, East Africa’s high-standard farmland had been updated to the second generation, focusing on three main areas: first, consolidating land to suit mechanized farming; second, upgrading irrigation canal technology, replacing water-lifting windmills with pumps and other new techniques; and third, building machine-plowed roads to assist mechanized harvesting, facilitating large machinery operations in fields, especially by reinforcing and widening farming roads.

This was why Lorraine Town was filling in some farmland. While old farm roads were fine for people and animals like oxen and horses, they couldn’t accommodate heavier tractors and cars.

Moreover, East Africa’s second-generation high-standard farmland included measures like fertilizer and pesticide usage. However, these were currently East Africa’s weak points, mainly relying on farm manure or imported fertilizers and pesticides.

Of course, East Africa didn’t completely depend on imports. In some developed domestic and coastal cities, areas with a certain chemical industry base could implement these measures preferentially.

For instance, Lorraine Town’s upper-level city, Dodoma, had small chemical enterprises. But at present, they could only meet the needs of the city’s surrounding areas. Although Lorraine Town wasn’t far from Dodoma, it wasn’t considered a suburb, so it didn’t receive allocations of related pesticides and fertilizers.

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First Town.

The Minister of Agriculture, Gorwystan, was reporting on nationwide agricultural improvements in East Africa. To facilitate management and promote mechanized farming, the Ministry of Agriculture divided the nation into zones.

Gorwystan: ”Currently, East Africa has formed nine major agricultural zones and several smaller zones. The nine major zones are: the Eastern Coastal Plain Region (including northern Mozambique, Kenya, and Tanzania’s coast), the East African Plateau Zone (east of Lake Tanganyika), the Great Lakes Region (also primarily distributed on the East African Plateau), the Two Rivers Region (Shabelle and Juba river basins), the Central Plateau Zone (mainly in the Katanga Plateau and Matebele Plateau), Mozambique Region (southern Mozambique plain), Lake Malawi Region, Angola Region, and the South African Plateau Zone.”

”Apart from these nine major zones, areas like the Azande Plateau, Nile River Basin, Congo Rainforest, Southwest Africa, and others haven’t formed large-scale agricultural areas due to various limitations.”

”Among the nine major agricultural zones, the Central Plateau and Mozambique regions develop the fastest, with potential to surpass the Great Lakes Region.”