Chapter 771: Angola Inheritance (Continued)
In addition to taking over the city of Luanda, East Africa has begun a new round of population migration. Nothing is more reassuring than immigration to gain control of Angola.
Of course, this is also to accept the Portuguese legacy and avoid wasting resources. Although the Portuguese government was driven away, production in Angola will continue.
Angola is very different from the areas occupied by East Africa in the past. Although it is not developed under the rule of the Portuguese, the agricultural conditions are not bad, and there are a large number of plantations that East Africa cannot just leave unattended.
After all, in the non-mechanized era, it was very difficult to reclaim wasteland. East Africa has a deep understanding of this. It took East Africa more than 20 years to build the country's agriculture to its current scale, which consumed a lot of time and manpower costs.
Now there are large plantations in Angola that can be used for free, which is much easier than reclaiming land in East Africa.
The accumulation of the Portuguese over hundreds of years is not a small amount, especially in the highly developed western coastal areas, East Africa can directly take over and accommodate a large population.
This is very important to Ernst, as it is related to the future industrial layout of East Africa, especially in opening up trade across East Africa and boosting the central economy.
Although the three central provinces are rich in resources, limited inland development is a common problem in many countries. After all, this is the era of the ocean, and the main mode of trade transportation is by sea.
If the inland areas want to compare with the coastal areas, the most effective way is to activate the inland water transport network, just like the Yangtze River in the Far East Empire can transport goods from the coast directly to the Sichuan Basin. The most typical example is Germany. In addition to the role of railways, the canal network is an important reason for the balanced economic development of Germany.
East Africa certainly does not have excellent water transportation conditions, but if the construction of the western section of the Central Railway is activated, it will be able to achieve 70% of the effect in the future.
The most important thing for inland economic development is to connect with peripheral areas. Currently, industrial investment in East Africa is also mainly concentrated in inland areas. In this way, the economies of the three central provinces will gain a first-mover advantage, thereby offsetting some of the disadvantages in transportation and logistics.
In other words, the development of inland economy mainly relies on the domestic market, while the coastal economy mainly relies on the foreign market. In the era of sea power, the coastal economy inevitably gains an advantage, and East Africa is using various means to solve this problem.
Moreover, there is a huge difference between the inland East Africa and the Far East Empire, where the American heartland is unwelcome, especially after the acquisition of Angola.
The main industrial resources of the United States and the Far East Empire, in terms of important energy and major minerals, are mainly concentrated in marginal areas. For example, the United States is mainly around the Great Lakes, while the Far East Empire is mainly in the west or northeast.
East Africa happens to be mainly concentrated in the central and southern parts, but the climatic conditions in southern East Africa are not as good as those in the central part, and the environmental carrying capacity is weak, which is one of the advantages of economic development in the central part.
Then there is transportation. Transportation between the United States and the Far East Empire is affected by mountains. The western United States is the Rocky Mountains. If it were not for the strong rise of the Internet and the economies of the Far East Empire countries in the 21st century, the economy of the western United States would probably be difficult to compare with the old industrial areas near Europe.
Not only are there many mountains in the western part of the Far Eastern Empire, but the economies of the Central Asian countries further west are also underdeveloped, and the cost of land transportation cannot compete with the cost of sea transportation. At the same time, there is a lack of water resources, making it impossible to effectively connect with the central economy.
But it is different in East Africa. The situations on the east and west coasts of East Africa are similar, and the situations they face are also similar. For example, the west coast faces North and South America, while the east coast faces the Eurasian continent. This is the distribution of market demand.
In terms of energy and raw materials, the west coast is close to West Africa, the east coast is close to the Middle East, and the northern land of East Africa can be connected to North Africa.
This means that in the future East Africa will be close to the world's three major commodity oil production regions, and the same is true for raw materials such as iron ore.
West Africa's mineral resources are no worse than those of East Africa, and can complement those of East Africa. The most important thing is that oil energy is relatively scarce in East Africa.
This to a certain extent makes up for the disadvantage of East Africa's lack of oil resources. Of course, Angola's rich oil and gas resources are sufficient to meet East Africa's development needs, as long as the population is not too large.
In short, East Africa attaches unprecedented importance to Angola, just like when Ernst crossed Mozambique, he had to take over the Matabele Plateau and the Transvaal Republic first.
…
First town city.
As the person in charge of Angola's post-war economic recovery, von der Leyen is reporting to Ernst on the government's work.
"We have sent more than 600 professionals from various industries to Angola, but this is just a drop in the bucket for the Angolan region. Currently, the main daily operations in Angola are still maintained by the military, but the military can only be responsible for public security issues and guarding against enemies at sea."
"So if we want to restore Angola's production, we need a large population to do this, and given that the population in the central region is also relatively scarce, we can only think of a solution in the east."
"Affected by the war, our immigration policy has also been greatly affected. Even the Far East immigration business has come to a short-term halt."
"Before this, we had already recruited a lot of people from the east to join the army or support the battlefields in the central and western regions. So from the perspective of our country's population situation, the development of the west is still very difficult."
This is the second time in nearly a decade that East Africa has felt the constraints of labor shortage, even though the population of East Africa is not small in the world.
But East Africa has a very big problem, that is, East Africa has more habitable areas than similar countries, which is mainly reflected in the area of arable land.
Except for the desert areas, it seems that most areas in East Africa can develop agriculture. Even in the desert areas, East Africa also has "fertile" land such as the Mesopotamian River Basin in Somalia that is suitable for developing economic agriculture.
Regarding this point, I guess Tsarist Russia, which is also a country with a large area, would cry to death. The difference between tropical and frigid regions is very obvious.
Although the land area of East Africa is not as large as that of Tsarist Russia, the situation is reversed once the effective land area is calculated. Even the Congo Basin is just not suitable for development now. Except for the core rainforest area, it can be effectively utilized as long as investment is made.
"Also, the Portuguese have only developed Angola to a very low degree. However, after all, they have been operating for hundreds of years, and the legacy they left behind is also very rich. In addition to a large amount of land resources, we also control many mineral resources. In order to maintain and develop the Angolan region in the future, we must first immigrate at least 40,000 people to maintain the normal operation of the plantations and mines."
The Portuguese in Angola are now basically under the centralized control of East Africa, which has caused the direct stagnation of production in plantations and mines.
Restoring production activities on these plantations and mines is an important goal of the current East African government, and this requires people with governance experience.
"We can follow the usual practice and transfer professionals from existing farms and mines to Angola. However, it is difficult to communicate with the Portuguese slaves, so we need to get a group of black people from the Midwest to serve as translators to assist in commanding the local slaves in Angola."
Relying on only 40,000 people can at best maintain a basic population framework. If one wants to retain Angola's plantations and mines, then of course the two to three million black people in Angola must first support them. This is also a rather helpless move.
(End of this chapter)
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