African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 817: The Breadbasket of East Africa

  Timely updating of the agricultural situation every year is an important task for the East African government, because agriculture is one of the main sources of tax revenue for the East African government, and East African agriculture has not yet been finalized and continues to increase every year, so data must be updated in a timely manner.

Ernst said: "Now that the war is over, the focus of East Africa's development must return to the economic aspect, and agriculture is an important guarantee for industrial and economic development. Therefore, after the security crisis is resolved, the stable and orderly development of East Africa's agriculture must be maintained. It is an important task for all agricultural sectors.”

 There is no doubt that agriculture is one of the ballast stones for East Africa’s economic development, and if East Africa wants to develop industry, it is bound to obtain more funds and raw materials from agriculture.

 The best way is to continuously increase agricultural production and increase exports of agricultural products. As for causing a drop in international prices of food, agricultural raw materials, etc., that is not a priority issue for East Africa.

Just like the Far East Empire's efforts to develop cheap labor factories from the end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, it was actually a forced and helpless choice. You didn't even do the most basic labor-intensive industries. There were plenty of people abroad who did it, and their manpower The cost is cheaper.

 Once the opportunity is missed, European and American industries will shift to India, Africa and other regions. Even if the situation is bad, the United States can also shift to South America and the Middle East.

 Very different from the 21st century, agriculture in the 19th century was still the main source of income for most countries, and it was also the only channel for original capital accumulation in non-colonial countries.

 Hence, the economic development of East Africa is bound to draw blood from agriculture, and East Africa’s hard work in agriculture in the past two decades is actually to cultivate its own domestic hematopoietic capacity.

Of course, East Africa also has other sources of income, among which mineral resources and agriculture are equally important, especially the precious metal resources in East Africa, that is, gold mining.

  But this is mainly to supplement the economic development of East Africa. If it continues to rely on selling minerals as its main source of income, then East Africa will end up like those resource-based countries in the previous life.

 …

 Because East Africa is a country of monarchs, the prosperity of the country does not mean that Ernst is wealthy. The money is mainly led by the East African government, and all of it is invested in the country's economic operations.

 Hence, East Africans lack the tens of thousands of "wealth myths" like the United States, but they are able to concentrate more national power to lead industrial development. As for the difference between national wealth and personal wealth, in Ernst's view, East Africans have no right to bargain.

Ernst’s primary goal is to ensure that East African citizens are “active”, maintain their production efficiency, and deprive them of surplus production value, thereby ensuring the orderly development of the social atmosphere of the entire country.

 Great Lakes Region.

While Ernst was calculating his family fortune, Constantine came to the Great Lakes region for the third time to inspect. Since Constantine stepped down from his important duties, his favorite thing is to wander around East Africa while inspecting and lecturing local governments.

Ernst himself did not make money for the Hechingen royal family from state funds. This is the biggest example. Of course, with the Hechingen consortium, the Hechingen royal family is still as rich as the country, but the scale of the Hechingen consortium has been completely It cannot be compared with the collection of state-owned enterprises under the East African government.

“The Great Lakes is the sea on our East African Plateau. Improving water conservancy in the Great Lakes Basin is a century-old plan for the entire Great Lakes Basin.” Constantine said while looking at a piece of vibrant farmland.

The windmill rotates slowly in the breeze, squeaking and squeaking, guiding the lake water to flow to the shore, and then flows from the iron pipe to the water tank, into the aqueduct, and irrigates the land on the shore.

 Nowadays, various agricultural facilities in the Great Lakes Region are more complete, the fields are in order, the rivers are crisscrossed, the houses are neat, and farmers and livestock roam in the fields, creating a grand scene of a "land of fish and rice". Graeme, an official of the Western Great Lakes Province, assured Constantine: "The construction of water conservancy projects has always been the key development direction of our Western Great Lakes Province. In the past ten years, Western Great Lakes Province has undergone earth-shaking changes, and most of these changes have been caused by water conservancy projects. Construction as a guarantee.”

 In fact, as a large agricultural province, the Western Great Lakes provincial government can only focus more on agriculture, because the industry in East Africa is mainly concentrated in the coastal and central regions, while the Western Great Lakes Province, which is deeply inland, does not even have opportunities.

Of course, the resource endowment of the Western Great Lakes Province is not entirely bad, and it has the ability to develop industry, but it pales in comparison to the central and southern provinces.

However, the gold mining in the Western Great Lakes Province ranks first in East Africa. The area surrounding the Great Lakes Region is an important gold mine distribution area in East Africa, so the two provinces in the Great Lakes Region are currently the main gold-producing areas in East Africa.

However, gold production is vertically managed by institutions directly appointed by important governments in East Africa, and the Western Great Lakes Province does not benefit from this.

“Throughout the 1980s, our province meticulously managed 170,000 square kilometers of river basins, opened up more than 43.5 million acres of cultivated land, built 2,923 kilometers of river embankments, dredged and renovated 3,451 kilometers of rivers, built 5,487 sluices, and dug 30,000 artificial canals. kilometers, 586 large, medium and small reservoirs, and food production has increased three times compared to the 1970s," Gramm proudly recounted the construction achievements of Western Great Lakes Province.

Constantine was also very interested in these. He said: "I am afraid that there are not many countries in the world that can achieve such construction achievements in ten years. You have done a good job."

 In fact, every famous great power in the 19th century developed well, but their development path was different from that of East Africa. East Africa embodies the style of big government everywhere, and everything is promoted and led by the government, similar to Germany.

 The negative example is the United States. The United States actually develops more exaggeratedly than any other country in the world every year. However, the economic data of the United States are scattered, and the private economy and local forces play the leading role.

For example, in terms of water conservancy construction, East Africa focuses on large-scale planning and coordinated regional development, while each state in the United States develops independently, and occasionally the central government coordinates cross-regional project construction. Therefore, as long as the data of the United States is aggregated, it will not be inferior to any other country.

The U.S. central government is weak in the national economy, which means that its economic data is not easy to intuitively reflect. On the contrary, the East African government has a good understanding of the development of the country.

Gram continued: "The cultivated land area of ​​the entire Western Great Lakes region now reaches more than 205 million acres, ranking second in the country, second only to the North Great Lakes Province."

By 1890, a total of more than 1.8 billion acres of cultivated land had been developed in East Africa. The provinces surrounding the Great Lakes region alone accounted for half of the cultivated land in East Africa, accounting for 900 million acres. The output of food crops exceeded two-thirds of the country's total.

Of course, the provinces surrounding the Great Lakes Region are relatively broad. For example, the Plateau Province in the south is almost the main body of Tanzania in later generations, and its area is quite large. The North Great Lakes Province in the north, which was the cultivated land of Uganda in the previous life, also has a considerable area of ​​cultivated land.

  Moreover, this region mainly produces food crops, so the area around the Great Lakes region is a veritable “granary of East Africa”, with wheat and rice production ranking first in the country.

 The next is the coastal plain area. The area of ​​the coastal plain area is not small. However, in recent years, agriculture has mainly shifted to the cultivation of cash crops, providing production raw materials for eastern cities or directly participating in foreign trade.

The scale of cultivated land in other regions, such as the central, southern, northwest (Somalia), and northern areas, is too small and cannot be compared with the three traditional food production bases in East Africa.

 (End of this chapter)