African Entrepreneurship Record

After listening to Morse’s advice in Helwein, he asked Morse to formulate the agricultural development strategy for Kampala City, which is also considered a commendable practice in the governance of East African countries.

After all, most East African officials do not have the rich experience and family heritage like European aristocratic officials, which makes East African officials more reliant on the advice of ”experts.” The only pity is that there are too few experts like Morse who are pragmatic.

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In Rhein City, Ernst is also listening to reports from professionals at the Ministry of Agriculture.

”As of 1898, the national arable land area has approached 250 million mu, ranking only behind Tsarist Russia and the United States worldwide. In the past eight years, new arable lands have mainly been added in the central, western, and southeastern regions.”

”As arable land has increased, so have the agricultural water facilities. More than four million Black laborers participate in agricultural production activities. A large number of new water facilities and reservoirs have been built. In the past five years alone, more than 20,000 new reservoirs have been constructed, greatly increasing agricultural productivity.”

As a country mainly with a tropical savanna climate, rainfall distribution in most of East Africa is uneven, especially with great seasonal differences. The construction of water facilities has significantly improved East African agricultural productivity.

Without water facilities, most of East Africa’s land could only be cultivated once a year. But with new reservoirs and water facilities, with water source guarantees, a lot of East African land has been upgraded to double cropping a year, with a small portion even reaching three crops a year.

This means that in East Africa, without increasing the cultivated area, grain output can be doubled, demonstrating the outstanding achievements of East African agricultural water conservation construction.

”In the nineties, our most important technological advancement was the development and popularization of large vehicles and agricultural machinery. By 1898, the number of tractors nationwide reached over 14,000, with the highest popularity in the Great Lakes Region and central areas.”

East African tractor production technology is relatively mature, and as a priority science and technology project, it mostly satisfies domestic demand. Currently, East Africa also has the most cars, tractors, and other internal combustion engine vehicles in the world.

The secret to East Africa’s advantage in the production of automobiles and tractors, among other agricultural machinery, lies in the assembly line production. On this basis, Ernst also proposed the concept of a complete industrial chain.

This makes the division of labor among East African factories clear, with cooperative development, having a significant impact on East Africa’s industrial capacity. Take the New Frankfurt City’s automobile assembly plant, for example; many of its parts are not produced internally but are provided by other factories.

Of course, with the unified standards set by the East African government, the reliability of components has been greatly improved.

These factories are mostly located in the central inland areas due to confidentiality needs, while the coastal ones adopt European and American standards. Hence, the automobile manufacturing plants in Dar es Salaam City and Mombasa still adopt traditional hand assembly mode, which is extremely inefficient.

Certainly, East African assembly line models will also cooperate with these manually produced cars for export; the former are usually high-end models, while the latter are low-end models.

After all, assembly line model parts are produced in bulk, more uniform in quality, easier to maintain and repair, thus crafted as ”high-end goods.”

However, the main sources of income for the two cities, aside from industry, also include commerce and services, which are aspects inland East African cities do not possess.

”In the past thirty years, it has also been a period of massive development in our forestry resources. The continuous expansion of national territory has resulted in increasingly larger forest areas, especially in the Congo Basin, with its almost inexhaustible forestry resources. For artificial forests, they are mostly rubber plantations.”

Before East Africa, the African continent had long remained underdeveloped, amassing a vast amount of forestry resources. Even in the arid regions of Southwest Africa and the Somali area, there exists a large amount of primeval forest, meaning currently, the deforestation area in East Africa far exceeds the planting area.

Moreover, this situation will continue, with city and arable land areas still on the rise, so the plundering of forests will be a long-term process.

”East African livestock farming is advancing rapidly, especially in South Africa and Southwest Africa, where top-quality pastures can be found. The main economy of Southwest Africa is livestock farming, and the development of livestock farming in the western region has also led to a certain competitive relationship with Argentine agriculture.”

Argentina is a great power in livestock farming, and in the 19th century, it could even be referred to as a strong livestock farming nation. Southwest Africa, although arid, has vast grasslands. Combined with its sparsely populated area, it is naturally advantageous for large ranch development. Moreover, with the construction of the Whale Bay Port railway and Alexandria Port, outbound access for Southwest Africa’s agricultural and livestock products has been provided.

The primary market for livestock farming is naturally European countries, which has, to some degree, lowered international beef prices. Of course, the livestock farming development in Southwest Africa started late, so its current influence is still weak.

”As for fisheries resources, they are also in a rapid development stage. The existence of fishing grounds on the West Coast has provided East Africa with a stable source of marine fisheries resources. In the past eight years, East African marine fishing has quadrupled, in cooperation with shipping, railroad, and cold storage technology development, it has not only provided residents with a new source of meat but also brought huge profits through exports to Europe and America.”

East Africa’s West Coast fishing ground is the fifth largest in the world and is also the only one among the world’s five large fishing grounds that hasn’t undergone large-scale development.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast of East Africa, the presence of the Somali current forms seasonal fishing grounds, and unlike the unrest of Somali in previous eras, East Africa has firmly grasped the rights to resource development of the Somali coastal fishing grounds.

In previous eras, Somali due to civil war, government and local warlord corruption and incompetence could not effectively manage the Somali coast, turning the entire Somali coast into a haven for foreign fishing boats.

The Somali fishermen’s small skiffs couldn’t compare with foreign advanced and professional fishing vessels, leading to rampant foreign fishing along the Somali coast, which depleted local fisheries resources, leaving fishermen without a source of income, ultimately giving rise to the Somali ”pirate” profession.

Originally, small fishing boats were inadequate for fishing, but once engines were equipped, robbing passing merchant ships enabled a class leap, making the Somali pirate issue a cycle of cause and effect.

However, although the Somali coastal fishing grounds are resource-rich, they ultimately cannot compare to the West Coast fishing grounds. Although East Africa gained access to the West Coast for a short time, considering the East African government’s vigorous support for marine fishing development, both were nearly simultaneous, so the growth rate of West Coast marine fishing far exceeds that of the East Coast.

”The above basically outlines the fundamental developments of our agriculture, forestry, livestock, and fishery industries. Overall, East African agriculture is in a period of rapid and stable growth.”

”The driving force behind this rapid development mainly comes from government policy promotion, national population increase, transportation industry development, and more.”

On the policy front, there is a unified national strategy; the East African government plays an indispensable role. Population growth is the primary driver for East African agricultural investment and expansion, and transportation industry development is also extremely important, particularly in exploiting and utilizing fisheries resources.

If the western transportation conditions were inadequate, East Africa certainly couldn’t achieve such vigorous development of its western marine fishing industry unless nearby cities and factories on the West Coast processed them into preserved goods like canned or semi-finished products.

The application of refrigeration technology on railways has enabled East Africa’s inland to enjoy relatively fresh seafood, thus broadening the market range of the marine fishing industry.

In fact, only after the basic formation of the East African railway network did East Africa’s marine fishing industry enter a rapid development phase.